58 chapter one
foreign scholar-translators of Chinese literature are still relatively few
in number and thus exert considerable, perhaps unbalanced or dispro-
portionate individual influence on representations of this literature to
audiences elsewhere. Their pivotal role is reinforced because foreign
consecration of Chinese literary works carries much weight in domestic
discourse, as a consequence of the uneven exchange noted earlier. Be-
fore anything else, however, we should note that sinologist means differ-
ent things to different people. Especially in North-American discourse,
if it is used at all it often has connotations of Orientalist representations
of traditional Chinese culture, insufficient disciplinary theorization
and delusions of all-encompassing visions of an essentialized “China.”
Remarkably, China scholar, which should really mean the same thing,
carries much less of a negative connotation. In Europe these issues are
recognized but sinologist is a less controversial term, perhaps because
the study of China is generally concentrated in departments of Chi-
nese Studies and less developed in disciplinarily defined departments
such as Comparative Literature or History.
For now, with regard to modern Chinese literature’s low inter-
national impact and the role of the scholar-translators, suffice it to
observe the following points. One: while the presence of European
languages in Western high school curricula doesn’t automatically gen-
erate top-quality translations from these languages, there is doubtless
room for improvement in the field of translation from a language that
most of the current professionals started studying only when they went
to university. Two: there are many examples of successful coopera-
tion between native speakers of Chinese and of the various target lan-
guages. Three: when assessing scholarship and translation we should
bear in mind that modern Chinese literature “itself”—the primary
text in the exercise, so to speak—has had a hard time finding its foot-
ing during the extreme upheavals of modern Chinese history. Four:
concerns about sinological and Western perspectives, which are often
grossly generalized, should perhaps not move scholar-translators to
stop studying and translating Chinese literature. As others have done,
Bonnie McDougall rightly cautions against the naive adoption of West-
ern perspectives, but whether one should “adapt criticism to native
expectations”—and whether one can, to begin with—is open to de-
bate. This position implies that foreign scholar-translators can do little
more than report on domestic discourse, and presupposes a view of
literature as primarily social documentation that limits the potential of