Western literature, from the mysterious figure of Marco Polo to the deliberate fictions of Daniel Defoe and Mark Twain, has constructed portraits of China born of dreamy parody or sheer prejudice. The West's attempt to understand China has proven as difficult as China's attempt to understand the West. A Poetics of Translation is the result of academic conversations between scholars in China and the West relating to issues in translation. "Translation" here is meant not only as the linguistic challenges of translating from Chinese into English or English into Chinese, but also as the wider questions of cultural translation at a time when China is in a period of rapid change. The volume illustrates the need for scholars, both eastern and western, to learn very quickly to live within the exchange of ideas, often with few precedents to guide or advise. This book also reflects the final impossibility of the task of translation, which is always, at best, approximate. By examining texts from the Bible to poetry and from historical treatises to Shakespeare, this volume carefully interrogatesâand ultimately broadensâtranslation by exposing the multiple ways in which linguistic, cultural, religious, historical, and philosophical meaning are formed through cross-cultural interaction. Readers invested in the complexities of translation betwixt China and the West will find this volume full of intriguing studies and attentive readings that encompass the myriad issues surrounding East-West translation with rigor and imagination.

In Between East and West/Word and Image , Geng Youzhuang, one of China's leading intellectuals, offers an original and sophisticated analysis of both Western cultural and literary theory and contemporary Chinese thought. In this fascinating exploration of the respective intellectual traditions within China and the West, Geng shows how the dynamics at work between word and image become a parable for understanding the larger relationship between Chinese and Western ideas. Geng first surveys influential Western thinkers and their ideas, with a special focus on the relations between words and things, signs and meanings, image and language. He next explores the conflicted relationship between religion and literature in the West. Finally, Geng turns his focus to China, discussing the meaning and significance of sinology and the possibilities of treating China as a sign and referent in contemporary Western thinking. Anyone interested in the forces at work within the intermingling of Eastern and Western literature, writing, and the semiotics of culture, will find Between East and West/Word and Image compelling.