酷我-北美枫

10/02/2010

From this on will be a tentative narrative inquiry about myself. I have always been driven by the wish to put down my past, its sadness and happiness, as I once wrote, “Life and memory has always been the themes of my writings”. Those are poems, novels, prose – sort of literary stuff, occasionally coming out of a reflective mind. Still, I do not think I had ever had the idea of reflecting on myself in any academic ways, until I was amazed by the work of Cui, which depicts how the author’s colleagues and himself learnt English and later taught English in China. My empathy grew as I read the book in the free time of my trip in Lijiang: the bumpy hours to and from Dali, Lugu Lake; the silent and leisure hours after drinks in the bar---. I did not read it through without a break; rather, I read on and off, as the trip paused, then continued. My emotion accumulated, then it was a bit interrupted, but the momentum kept-there were times when tears welled up in my eyes and when vague, distant memories of my early life zoomed up with overwhelming strength. The attention to individuals instead of groups, accordingly, individual stories instead of grand stories, got echoes, stronger and stronger. I have read about qualitative and quantitative method, and had some idea of the popular preference to statistics, the hard and objective evidences. To be frank, the positivist attitudes and methodology has not fitted me for a simple reason: I always wanted knowledge that has a connection with me. I have put my past, real or imaginary, in literary ways; and I do want it in academic ways as well. For good or bad, I do not want the stories I tell general and therefore vague as much as distinct and therefore uniquely mine. It seemed then, interpretative methods, or the qualitative ones fit me well. However, the theoretical stuff or the exemplary studies about for instance, case study, ethnographic interview, etc., somehow scared me in a distant manner- They were still other people’s stories.

(As I wrote down this, I was listening to Kankan, a singer popular in Lijiang. Her songs were played here and there in Lijiang as my wife and I were wandering about in the Old Town, simple and sentimental. We bought one disc of her best known songs in a disc shop selling music that were rarely heard. It is snowing outside though it is quite warm inside with heating on. I could see the flakes dancing around the buildings all the way down to the ground. There were occasionally people hurrying in and outside my eyesight. There was a milkman with his milk cart at the gate of our residence area. “Ding, ding, ding” rang his bell and suddenly he was surrounded by milk buyers. I put on my thick clothes, carefully the hat, took a small pot, 2 RMB, downstairs into the world of snow. The chill still hurt me as I moved on to the milkman and almost froze me as I waited there for my turn to get the milk. My mother-in-law should be watching me as she was always cautious and this time specifically, worried that I would lose my way back. The milkman was wrapped unrecognizable, with only 2 eyes exposed to the chill. I expressed my thanks to him for bringing milk here in such a cold day. He said, a little surprised, “I should thank you for buying the milk”. Here I understood life was not easy for ordinary people.)

(This seems not quite fit for this place, yet I do need a place to keep my reflections, so just forgive me: I will keep my narrative as comments to this. If anybody sees this and has some invoked motive to put his or her experiences, I will be really glad. Just a piece of caution: try to put down true stories, not faked or imagined)

今天看到关于贾樟柯的报道，说起他怎样的“院内开花院外香”，从《小武》到《三峡好人》，都是国外拿奖后慢慢地国内才承认，随之而来的是他作为一个文艺片导演得到认可。引用记者徐百柯的话，“《小武》拍出来10年了。11月23日在北京大学举行的纪念观影会上，许多人说自己是“小武”的老朋友，也有许多人是第一次见到“小武”。10年间，《小武》从一个“暗号”变成了一个坐标。而我另一个感觉是，贾樟柯也越来越成为一个符号，或者说一个代名词”。“暗号”这一个词在王小波逝世后也有人在祭文中用过，说是王小波成了一个接头暗号，并由此把形形色色的事物分类。而王小波作为一个作家，从他的《黄金时代》起，大概也是从联合文学奖开始，杀回香港大陆，继而流行起来，比如他逝世十年后在网上还有“王小波门下走狗”风风火火，而且从网上杀到传统出版。

从两人的流行轨迹我倒是有几点可说。首先是一个体制的自信心。贾樟柯的电影和王小波的小说不被国内这样那样的审查通过，关键还是这个体制的信心问题。比如说，贾樟柯的电影描写的东西总是围绕“所谓底层小人物的苦难”，而王小波的小说也不例外，而且更多黑色幽默，更多隐射。这些都是所谓“潜在的不安全”，会引起那些底层小人物的共鸣，唤醒起他们的小人物意识，和他们要做大人物的雄心，进而危害到体制内那些大人物的利益，而他们的利益就是所谓的公共利益，国家利益。这就是主旋律，围绕这个主旋律则是种种规约。规约者总是自以为是地认为那些被规约的普通人不过是些木偶，或是他们可以制造些意识形态话语，切入普通人的视角，把他们玩弄于口舌之间。事实上，一个普通人经历现世所给予他的种种苦难，他总会对这些苦难加以某种角度的审视。而且即使再草根的人，也有草根的智慧，对于规约者的种种计俩，也都有或深或浅的了解。他们都是明白人，只是处于种种立场才要么沉默要么婉转曲折地发发牢骚。史铁生的立场可为代表。他说人生的种种苦难，其实并无现实的因果关系。他的意思是说人生本是受苦，并非由于现世种种（比如不怀好意的规约）才如此。所以对他来说，要么在黑夜里向着更黑的夜进发，要么就去撞墙。这种立场当然在佛学或者哲学或者文学上有更深刻透彻的阐释。可是这种立场给了规约者盲目的自信，觉得一切尽在掌握吧，因而也就更放肆。当然，底层人物的逆来顺受也可以这样解释，比如像贾樟柯所说，“--- 再就是底层的问题。事实上，社会一定是有一个结构的，如果我们不伪善的话，这个世界是不平等的。但当讨论电影的人谈到底层这个概念的时候，他把自身认同于权力，认同于非底层，他会说“这个电影是关于底层人民的什么什么”。这是一件很危险的事情。事实上，甚至我电影里面那样的人，他也会说“那些底层的人怎么怎么”。底层变成了一个虚的东西，所有人都不是底层，因为他总能找到“比我更惨的人”，所以这个社会文化中就变成了没有一个阶层是底层，也就不存在这个社会对于一个人群的不公正。因为实际上对那个人群是没有人去认同的。”这种说法解释一下就是，大伙即便是在看这种电影或小说时，都没把自己当成底层人，那些体制中的非底层人当然不会，更惨的是底层的人也不会，所以都有一种优越感，都觉得还有比自己更底层的人，所以自己虽然有种种的不如意，或是认识到这种不如意归根结底来自于体制的不公，虽然也从电影或小说中或多或少的找到自己，但总是想还有比自己更惨的啦，自己已经不错啦。问题的危险在于，当今中国大部分的人就是底层人，就是主流，象贾樟柯所说，“真正看过了就会知道，直到现在，我的电影里面都是主流人群——如果我们能从客观上理解这个国家，认为我们这个国家是13亿人的国家，而不是1亿人的国家的话；是960万平方公里，再贫瘠的山村也住着人，而不光是北京CBD这一块，不光是浦东这一块的一个国家的话。我觉得他们是主流人群，怎么是边缘呢？如果说边缘，那只是在中国主流电影状态的边缘，但这个电影里面讲述的事实、生活和人我觉得是主流的。”

(以下是我校学生模仿史记为宿舍楼下零食店女店主所写的传记及翻译,我读后大笑,太有才了!)

史记·鸡蛋妹大传
Grand history record-------The biography of Miss Eggie

鸡蛋妹者，平鹏改元开放七年生，姓名籍贯已不可考矣，疑为巴郡人士。泽基代表二年春，随父至巴蜀夷语太学男舍地字号下房大堂设杂货铺谋生，至今已七年余。蛋素貌庸，姓名深藏，盖其面润如鸡子，会巴蜀风靡茶卤鸡子为朝食，好事者便借以呼之。蛋亦不忤，遂名矣。
Miss Eggie, given birth in the seventh year of Pingpeng Revolution, is unknown of her name and birth place,just assumed the native of Ba county. In the spring of the second year of Zeji Representative，she went to SISU with her father and made a live by starting grocery business in the hall of Men’s inferior residence, accounted more than 7 years now. Eggie has a plain appearance and hardly-known name. For her cheek seems like a chicken’s egg and at that time stewed egg is popular as food of breakfast in Bashu area, some nosy men called her this name of Miss Eggie. She was not annoyed and thus it became well-know.

太学士子纷芜，籍贯遍及巴蜀、荆楚、江淮、中原、燕赵等地，良莠不齐。初至伊始，经营惨淡，举步维艰。其父母遂陷诸学子口角，偶有纷争打斗者，蛋唯喏喏而已。后，众意稍怠，蛋遂仗父母舍监声势而慨然对抗也。
The college students are from various of areas such as Bashu, Jingchu, Jianghuai, Mid-China, Yanzhao.etc. In the first period Eggie came, it was hard for her to hold such a bleak business. Her parents then were trapped in the endless quarrels with student buyers. Sometimes they scolded and faught, Eggie didn’t dare to join. Later, the students didn’t stick to the traffle, Eggie thus struggled against them under the support of her parents and the dormitory supervisor.

年有余，蛋渐长成，然则其父母舐犊情深，故常伴左右为侍。俗云曰：从军满三年，母豕亦貂蝉。男舍地字号阴阳失调，人伦不合，渐有妄为之徒借购物之名行挑撩之实。蛋不拒亦不受，大售山寨烟草与劣质点心者。终有晓事者党同于更漏之时寻闹，呼曰：强辱鸡子妹！一呼百应，遂成地字号每断电之夜奇观矣。时年蛋已双九年华也。
One year or more later, Eggie grew up, but her parent loved her too much therefore she stayed around to accompany them. It is said that if you have been in the barrack for 3 years, you may look a sow as Marilyn Monroe. The men’s inferior residence is in serious shortage of girls’ visits, obeying against the nature, gradually some playboys started alluring Eggie under the name of shopping. Eggie neither rejected or accepted, but just selling out a great number of fake tobacco and low quality dimsum. Finally the wise people came together to shout out in the dark night, saying “Rape Eggie”. The slogan got response anywhere and thus became a wonder in each night when the electric power is cut off. In this year Eggie was at the age of double nine.

或曰：初闻此时，声传百里，颇为震怖。蛋父自床中挣坐起，持木杵怒曰：何人敢尔！蛋与母亦稍恐，噤声不语，但垂泪耳。后知学子所呼者，并无实害，乃从容对之。余尝经行大堂，见舍监某某于蛋母嬉笑。监笑曰：汝弗闻昨夜震呼否？惊否？母曰：渠自呼之，老娘自闻之，乳臭小儿吾不其待也！监涎笑曰：汝观吾可否？余心颇惊，愤而走。其后或有闻蛋父斗舍监者，众人传甚，不知其可信否。
Someone once said, when the Eggie’s firstly heard the slogan, it sounded to very distant place with a fierce shock. Eggie’s father struggled to get up, shouting with a wood stick in her hand, “Who fucking dares!” But Eggie and her mother were a little frightened and kept silent, only somehow wept. Later knowing it was only complaint, they transferred to treat it as nothing. I ever went across the hall, glancing the dormitory supervisor ABC teasing with Eggie’s mother. ABC smiled and said, did you hear the shouting last night? Were you frightened? Eggie’s mother answered, they freely shouted and me freely listened, but the kids won’t meet my desire. ABC provoked with smile, how do you think of me then? I was shocked to run away. After that I heard of the fighting between Eggie’s father and the supervisor. It was the issue in those days, but I doubted its reality.

涛宝和谐三年冬，蛋亦见诸塘报。时有太学生以宝钞购其牛乳若干，蛋母兑之以伪钞。生忿而诉诸地方塘报所。须臾，记者携西洋摄影仪往访之。母觍颜曰：吾店向有榜文曰“于本店购物使伪钞者，悉毁之”。记者询曰：即有此文，亦只证彼不用宝钞也，何解？母不答。蛋遂匿于母后，冷视之。记者寒，遂走，次日即见诸塘报副刊，曰：某太学驻舍小卖部公然兑补伪钞云云，旁缀一图，小如茶盏。终因事小，不入太学官僚眼矣。
In the winter of the third year of Taobao harmony, Eggie went onto the official paper. When a student bought some milk from her booth, her mother charged him some fake bills. The student got angry and raised complaints to local news. Some hours later a journalist went to interview with a western camera. Eggie’s mother got embarrassed, saying “usually we have tip to say TOTALLY RUINED IF SHOPPING WITH FAKE BILL”. The journalist inquired, how do you explain the tip to you yourself? The mother didn’t answer and Eggie hid behind, coldly looking at him. The journalist felt frozen and went away. Next day a report was found on the supplement of local paper, saying “Some buffet in some college publically charged the buyers with fake bill”, a cup-sized tiny picture nearby. It remained unsolved finally because of the tiny size.

是年，坊间传曰蛋亦习读素柩，见录于渝州府某卫生学堂。往来地字号众太学生，平日亦难见其芳踪，唯周六日而已。此言亦难辨真假也。蛋事扬于巴蜀夷语太学贴吧，为新人迷。亦有好事者往而拜，未果。
Just in that year, Eggie was said to learn medical and matriculated by some hygiene school in Yu county. Students passing by in the inferior residence also couldn’t see her except for the Saturdays and Sundays. This saying couldn’t be assured, neither. Eggie’s affairs were spread to the post bar, usually attracting the curiosity of newers. Some of them tried to visit her, fruitless.

太史公曰：蛋以豆蔻年华，习居于狼群之地，周旋于群雄之畔，免堕陷而逞雌威，获多金而交人情，是智也！然求私利而乱公德，贪小币而罔大爱，是不仁也。智而不仁，难终其身。新人诫矣！
Grand historian says, Eggie in her gender age, came to live in the wolves, held near the males, avoided the traps but showed her charms, acquired money and relativity. It is clever of her. However, she disordered the public virtue just for private interest, and lost general love just for little money. It is also kindless of her. It is hard for her to adhere to the way if with cleverness but also kindlessness. The newers should take it as a lesson.

I. Introduction

The meaning of any literary work lies at least at three levels (see the following figure): 1) meaning, which is comparatively definite and salient enough to grasp, 2) intention or intended effects, which embodies the pulls and pushes between convention and the writer’s creation, and denies any easy comprehension though it somehow leaves traces through the writer’s deviation from language norms, and 3) spirit, which is a dynamic fusion of both culture and the writer’s originality, and is the most unapproachable for it triggers (as the writer always intends) variety of comprehension.

This may somehow justifies the mystery of poetry. Poetry is perceived as the most elevated language and literary form. However, language is by its nature a make-shift to say what cannot be said: since no langue can perfectly translate the subtleties of thoughts or reflect the infinite variety within reality, there is always an unexpected margin between language and thought, a potential source of misunderstanding. Furthermore, as the most elevated literary form, poetry is most condensed, trying to say the most with the least words, thus, it is entitled to make fuller use of language. The peculiarity of poetry lies in its dimensional language, or as Widdowson (1992) puts it, “Poetry is viewed as a representation of socially unsanctioned reality through the exploitation of unrealized possibilities in language”. It seems to follow that what poems mean cannot be explained. However, seen in another way, how poems mean may be put to analysis, analysis of the traces they leave through their deviation from language norms. This paper intends to unfold a tentative picture of how linguistic features give warrant to certain individual understanding. The poem chosen is “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman wherein the poet highlights his pessimistic philosophy that life is short, death is ruthless and fame, illusionary.

II. The poem

To read this poem, the reader is required to attend to what significance words may have within the confines of the poem itself, that is to say, to dissociate the poem from context and to focus on the language itself and the way it connects with the patterning or language within the poem. In this way, the intended effects of its poetic elements, namely, its voice, diction, setting, figure of speech, imagery, syntax, form and sound.

From the title, we may know it is a private communication, which has point only for the participants. Then, what the significance of our engagement? The supposed participants and context they share are incorporated into a text which has been compared and made public by a first person writer and open to interpretation by a second- reader: the reader shifts from observer to participant. In this way, town, home refer to no privately shared knowledge but suggest universality, and still this intermingled relationship draws the reader to a close attendance to the poem itself.

--- Why does the poet choose his addressee an athlete dying young instead of someone else?

--- because this premature death suggests oddity and thus significance: young athlete relates to vigor, liveliness and even fame of mortal beings while his perishing indicates the truth that human beings are doomed to die.

--- What does the poet intend to address?

------

Mental operations of this question-and-answer may draw the reader into the self-contained context the poem creates. The plain statement, as the departure point of reflection, sheds light on the figurative language in the poem depicting death and fame, for instance, home, town, threshold, townsman of a stiller town, shady night and so on.

Consider the two deliberately chosen occasions in the first two stanzas, the time you won the race and Today you die. Though simple narrative it is, a rough reading may still put the reader into confusion, only the reoccurrence of certain words suggestion something significant. Then, what is it? Virtually, these two stanzas are inter-dependent in interpretation for they constitute sharp contrast: home in the second stanza, denies any referential interpretation, for it refers to tomb, and accordingly, town, the neither world, threshold, the opening of the tomb. However, in what way is home likened to a tomb? The resemblance is not expounded, instead, it is represented by association occurring in the contrast. The image shoulder-high has the effect to bring the two into close association and in return is prominent by repetition. It is this shift from the referential to the representational indicates significance to the extent that the language does not signify in customary linguistic ways.

Time, space, participants, events in these stanzas, all familiar yet somehow unexpectedly conspicuous are well mirrored in the accordingly chosen linguistic forms. And home we brought your shoulder-high---should-high we bring you home may best reveal the world difference shrouded with similarity: you are not what you were, and home is not home any more. Time has brought about fundamental changes (notice the change of tense: brought-bring). Once extracted and put side by side, the two lines may even lead the reader farther. The inversion of word order, especially which of shoulder-high and home may suggest whatever glory life may bestow a person, death is his destination and sometimes it arrives just at the wake of glory, the road towards glory is the same one towards death.

The second stanza is about death. It makes, one may say, a number of statements about the pessimistic associations. But the poet tells us none of theses association. He even does not use the word death in this stanza. Instead, home with so many happy imaginations stands out conspicuously. The poet adds to the experience in first stanza: he describes it so vividly with the prominent image of shoulder high.

Still so is the third stanza. The first glance may distract the reader’s focus and lead to divergent interpretations. These four lines constitute, at one level, a clear syntactic pattern. He is a smart lad to slip betimes away from fields where glory can not stay and where though the laurel grows early it withers quicker than the rose. However, it is somehow semantically ambiguous in that fields may relate to smart lad, glory and laurel, that is he is a smart lad to slip betimes away from fields (sports ground), or glory can not stay in the fields (sports ground, or even life arena), or in the fields though the laurel grows early, it withers quicker than the rose.

This syntactic unification of the three seemingly irrelevant propositions justifies in its own context the word fields as a pun with dimensional meaning. More important, it is this connection that suggests considerable semantic consistency, which supports certain interpretation. Though the athlete gets his reputation when he is quiet young, he is cretin to de, which is signified in the last two lines wherein laurel symbolizes glory. The deliberate layout of vertical lines, especially with the first line separated by a comma, the first part thus made prominent, and second part running on to the end, indicates the oddity of its connection and logic. The irony may emerge when the title is taken into consideration: the poet praises the athlete sensible to die early, to hold his eternal glory and thus the poet intends to say trough the irony underlying the whole text: death is inevitable and fame illusionary.

Consider the fourth stanza. Here, eyes and ears represent the whole person, including his senses and mentality. The special location with eyes as the beginning an dears as the ending is conspicuous in that it not only serves rhyme, but also suggests a circle of cognition: how the person feels fame and death and how fame and death strikes the person. Compare, for instance, record cut or not makes no sense/ when the shady night shuts the eyes. Notice also the line and silence sounds no worse than cheers, where the repetition of the pleasing sound s shows certain satisfaction, yet satisfaction at the cost of premature life, which reinforces the underlying irony.

In the sixth stanza, life is compared to a race, the end of which is death (the sill of shade). The premature death enables the athlete to win the race of life and secures the eternality of his glory. Here, irony again functions. It greatly extends the dimensions of meaning and the ironic tone it creates serves as safeguard against sentimentality: although the poet shows his pessimistic attitude towards short life, ruthless death and illusionary fame, it seems to the reader that he does not go too far. The combination of consonance and alliteration in fleet foot, that is, the repletion of the unpleasant sounds of f and t emphasizes swiftness of the athlete and thus accentuates the irony.

In the last stanza, the poet imagines what will happen to the dead athlete in the neither world. The paradox is that this premature death, on the one hand secures the eternality of his glory, on the other, makes it even more transient: laurel garland though is not withered, is briefer than a girl’s. Still, the complicated design signifies the paradox. Compare, for instance, And the strengthless dead will flock to gaze around that early laurelled head and find on it curls the garland unwithered but briefer than a girl’s. The repetition of and emphasize this illogicality.

III. Conclusion

The demystification of poetry, as demonstrated in the above analysis, the trinity of sound, form and meaning, though in a sense futile and frustrating, still has reason to provide general conditions for individual interpretation. In fact, the enchantment of poetry lies in the process of trust, aggression, incorporation and restitution of its elements and poetry as a whole.

References

Perrine, Laurence (1978). Sound and sense: An introduction to poetry. Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Widdowson, H, G. (1992). Practical stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Appendix

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

昔日赢得奖杯

广场澎湃沸腾

雀跃为你喝彩

君在肩头凯旋

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

今朝含悲而聚

抬君挥泪相送

轻轻归于尘土

悲沉万籁寂静

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

生命如此短暂

荣耀为谁停留

月桂依然苍翠

玫瑰却已凋零

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

暗空如幕笼罩

往事随风而逝

沉默代替欢呼

大地将君深藏

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

浩气永存世间

强敌黯然无光

后世纵有英雄

谁当与君齐名

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

荣耀并未远逝

君已踏上归途

前方光芒永耀

永恒冠军之杯

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
he garland briefer than a girl's.

头戴月桂花环

众友凝望君颜

小花点缀青丝

清隽丽如佳人

韵律

用鲜红书写被给予的生
该是高亢激越
用鲜红对抗被给予的死
却难免悲壮凄凉
满眼的红成就生与死
无非轮回的韵律

我宁愿这与人无关
那红色的船
在蓝色的海上
在生与死的临界穿行
或是旅程或是归程
以静止的姿态张望
以无声的语言歌唱
然后发现
四面是岸

乡村（一）

若是此时能走进暮色
我该是抽一根烟
家的炊烟
母亲在灶前
翻过那道山梁
虫子的声音被我踩灭了
若是轻轻走进家的傍晚
若是轻轻推开虚掩的家门
我该是看见
火光一闪一闪
母亲平静的脸

今天，我将嫁你为妻，
我的心啊，你是否涨满了
甜蜜、和欢喜？
经历了长长的过去，
是什么，使得我们终于相遇
在此时，此地？

今天，我将嫁你为妻，
我的心啊，你是否还有一些
彷徨、和犹豫？
面对着未知的明天，
会否有一日，
你会撇下我，转身，离去？

今天，我将嫁你为妻，
但愿我的容颜，
能为你留驻
永远的青春，与美丽
然而告诉我，你将同样疼惜
当我，不得不，老去

今天，我将嫁你为妻，
曾经的欢笑与泪水
化成今时，一缕柔情
风起时，我的涟漪，
只愿，荡漾在，
你的，波心

今天，我将嫁你为妻，
除去这颗心，这双手，
我没有更多，
可以用来，爱你
但是请你，请你
从今与我，惺惺相惜

今天，我将嫁你为妻
我的心啊，你该当涨满了
甜蜜、和欢喜
经历了长长的过去，
是上帝，使得我们终于相遇
在此时，此地

今天，我将嫁你为妻，
我的心啊，你不要再有什么
彷徨、和犹豫
仁慈上帝掌管明天，
爱我，不是因我此刻的美丽
而是因为，你会信守，今生的决定

Abstract: This paper is to historize the notion of equivalence by analyzing its origins and problems and to introduce recognizability as a feasible translation relationship by exploring the function of the situation-in-culture, that is, the target cuture.
Key words: equivalence, recognizability.

1 Introduction
Toury sets three premises for the translational status of any text, namely, (a) there exists or has existed a source text, (b) the assumed translation has been derived from this source text via a transfer process, (c) there is an intertextual relationship between the two texts. Toury claims,

If we now proceed to take the three postulates together, an assumed translation would be regarded as any target-culture text for which there are reasons to tentatively posit the existence of another text, in another culture and language, from which it was presumably derived by transfer operations and to which it is now tied by certain relationships, some of which may be regarded - within that culture------necessary and/or sufficient.” (Toury 1995:34)

The most problematic condition is the last one: what kind of intertextual relationships count as translational ones? It is here that spring those contradictory yet intertwined translation theories. The most notorious pairs are: prescriptive vs. descriptive, linguistic vs. aesthetic.
The first pair concerns different starting points: prescriptive approaches start from the definition and set ideal intertextual relationships, while descriptive ones argue that discovering the precise nature of the required intertextual relationship should be a valid goal, not the definition as the starting point of translation research. Or in other words, they are different in that the former purport that the boundaries of the concept of translation are ultimately set by something intrinsic to the concept of itself while the latter purport the boundaries are set by the ways in which members of a culture use the concept.
The second pair (linguistic vs. aesthetic) concerns its domain. The former describes translation as comparative linguistic undertaking and approaches it primarily from the perspective of the difference kin language structures. The object domain in this framework consists essentially of texts, mostly source-text / target-text pairs. The properties of each text pair are carefully studied, described and compared. This is considered too narrow a view by the latter. It is true that in all translating and interpreting the source and target languages must be implicitly or explicitly compared, but all such interlingual communication extends far beyond the mechanics of linguistic similarities and contrasts. The fact that language is part of a culture and in many respects constitutes a model of the culture gives much ground to the advocacy of the so called cultural turn which goes beyond linguistics into cultural studies.
The descriptive and the aesthetic always go together. Their combination aims at the systematic compilation of statements about regularities in the relationships between source and target texts, in the more sophisticated accounts attempting to relate these regularities further to relevant external factors in relation to the target culture. It proceeds from text comparison and makes generations of various sorts: usually groupings or classifications on the basis of shared characteristics, but also attempts at explanation, which build on observed correlations between the proposed groupings and, for example, socio and historico-cultural factors, especially those found in the realm of literary traditions, action—theoretical concepts, like skopos, or other external factors that seem to have a bearing on the intertextual relation.
In light of this, translation should be viewed with the target as one of most significant frames of reference, not the source as the final say. Translation as domestic inscription means that to say translation is a product of the influence of the source is rather to say it is a product of the reception of this influence by the target culture. The intertextual relationship between the source text and the target text, thus, shifts from a source-oriented equivalence to a target-oriented recognizability.

2 Equivalence: what the relationship should be
2.1 Equivalence
Equivalence has been considered the unique intertextual relation that only translations are expected to show: it is defined as the relationship between a source text and a target text that allows the TT to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place. Nearly all traditional definitions of translation, whether formal or informal, appeal to some notion of this: translation means the replacement, or substitution, of an utterance in one language by a formally or semantically or pragmatically equivalent utterance in another language.
This notion is explicitly grounded on a transcendental concept of humanity as an essence that remains unchanged over time and space, plus the positivist idea of a truth-out-there, something objective and absolute. As for the former, Nida (1964:4), one of the most outstanding advocates of equivalence, states, “as linguists and anthropologists have discovered, that which unites mankind is much greater than that which divides, and hence there is, even in cases of very disparate languages and cultures, a basis for communication.” The latter has to do with Platonic philosophy, for instance, Nida believes in that the message / meaning in context or the message/meaning and its reception can be pulled out of history, understood as unified and an essence of itself, and made into a timeless concept. It is this that conditions his dynamic equivalence, an equivalent effect which means thoroughly understanding not only the meaning of the source text but also the manner in which the intended receptors of a text are likely to understand it in the receptor language.
Similarly, Wills, another advocate, bases his theory of equivalence on the concept of a universal language which consists of universal forms and a core of shared experience, a belief that deep-structure transfer is possible via a hermeneutic process, and a generative component which translates intralingually from the base to the surface of a given language. Many other linguistically oriented writers on translation also cling rather tenaciously to standards which are beyond any conceivable change: equivalence is one such, second only to terium comparationis, something that presumably hovers somewhere between languages in some kind of air bubble and guarantees that what in the language you translate into is, indeed equivalent to what in the language you translate from.
Therefore, it is no surprise that equivalence is always taken for granted as a prescriptive criterion, as Koller (1995:196) says:

Translation can be understood as the result of a text-reprocessing activity, by means of which a source-language text is transposed into a target-language text. Between the resulting text in L2 (the target-language text) and the source text in L1 (the source-language text) there exists a relationship which can be designated as a translational, or equivalence relation.

Then the question to be asked is not whether the two texts are equivalent, but what type and degree of translation equivalence they reveal. The answer to this question displays a splendid variety. On the one hand, equivalence consists of two main binary oppositions: such is Nida’s notorious pair of formal equivalence (focusing on the message itself and aiming at the same form and meaning) and dynamic equivalence (focusing on reception and aiming at the same effect on their respective readers); with different labels but in the similar vein are semantic vs. communicative put forward by Newmark (1988), overt vs. covert by House (1981), documentary vs. instrumental by Nord (1997) and imitative vs. functional by Jacobsen (1994), etc.; on the other hand, equivalence has been split up into functional, stylistic, semantic, formal or grammatical, statistical and textual subtypes with hierarchies posited to give some subtypes higher priority than others, such as textual equivalence by Baker (1992), functional equivalence by Newman (1994), and so on.
2.2 The problems with equivalence
However, the notion of equivalence is quite controversial: it is one of the central issues in the theory of translation and yet one on which theorists seem to have agreed to disagree. First, the transcendental concept of humanity as an essence that remains unchanged over time and space, plus the positivist idea of a truth-out-there, something objective and absolute as its ground is open to criticism. We may return to this in the following chapter. Besides, it surely carries a normative and source-oriented flavor with preference of identity or sameness, or correspondence. It prescribes what translators should do and what requirements their texts must fulfill to be accepted as translations, for instance, Koller declares that

there exists equivalence between a given source text and a given target text if the target text fulfills certain requirements with respect to these frame conditions. The relevant conditions are those having to do with such aspects as content, style and function. The requirement of equivalence thus has the following form: quality (or qualities) x in the source text must be preserved. This means that the source language content, form, style, function, etc. must be preserved, or at least that the translation must seek to preserve them as far as possible.” (qtd. in Nord, 1997:7, emphasis in the original)

This raises the problem of circularity, namely, equivalence is supposed to define translation, and translation, in turn, defines equivalence. Equivalence is the aim of translation in that translation is seen as striving towards equivalence, or at least the particular kind of equivalence which suits the occasion. At the same time, equivalence is the precondition of translation in that only a target text which displays the required amount of equivalence, of the right kind, is recognized as a valid translation
The notion of equivalence postulates a relationship between source-language text and target-language text but does not say anything about the nature of the relationship. This makes it ahistorical in nature since the mere demand that a translation be equivalent to a certain original is void of content. This also undermines its applicability. The variety of equivalence typologies stated above, seen in another way, indicates its chaotic application: different scholars turn to different frames of reference. One of the sources of disagreement is that texts are not only very complex structures in themselves but are also complex with regard to the uses to which they are put and the effects which they can have in a given situation. This means that translation and the original can be compared with regard to a very large number of factors, any of which can be significant for some detail in the text, and hence needs to be taken into consideration when establishing equivalence. It turns out that each individual phenomenon may require its own theory of equivalence. Then, these phenomena cannot be accounted for in terms of generalizations those advocates of prescriptive equivalence have done.
Manipulated with the source as the dominant frame of reference, through abstraction and categorization, for instance, from intertextual to interlingual to intercultural, as an abstract and didactic relationship, or category of relationships between translations and their sources, the notion of equivalence deliberately limits other possibilities of translation practices, marginalizes unorthodox translation, and impinges upon real intercultural exchange. Instances of this kind could be numerous. According to Toury’s (1980) observation on translations into the Hebrew, examples of complete linguistic equivalence to the source text were rare, and the instances of near-adequacy to the source text, when they did occur, were usually accidental; on the other hand, despite the general lack of conformity with hypothetical models of translation equivalence, examples of mistranslations, translations considered inadequate in the target culture were, ironically enough, also rare. Another case in point is the translations into Chinese at the turn of the twentieth century: they have often been deliberately put into oblivion, gaining no positive assessments as translations from most present Chinese translation reviewers since they were only partially linguistically and functionally equivalent to the source text although they did enter and function as translations, occupying all positions from the center to the periphery in the historical and cultural circumstances.
2.3 Historizing equivalence
Seeing the disadvantage of such prescriptive and ahistorical approaches to translation, Toury shifts from defining translation a prior in terms of what it should be to looking at it empirically. As he says:

When one’s purpose is the descriptive study of literary translations in their environment, the initial question is not whether a certain text is a translation (according to some preconceived criteria which are extrinsic to the system under study), but whether it is regarded as a translation from the intrinsic point of view of the target literary polysystem. (Toury, 1980: 43)

For Toury, if a text is regarded and functions as a translation in a given community, then we agree to call the relation between this text and its original one of equivalence. This move is rather more radical than it may seem: it divests the idea of equivalence of any substantial meaning, making it merely the name given to the translational relation that is posited as existing between two texts from the moment when one of them is accepted as a translation of the other; it also demotes equivalence from its central position as simultaneously the goal and prerequisite of translation, considering it merely the consequence of the decision to recognize a text as a translation. The downgrading of equivalence and shifting of attention to acceptability of a text as translation in the target culture brings translation norms to the fore. According to Toury, the exact relation between original and translation, which results from the translator’s choices, needs to be determined from case to case. Whatever actual relation is found, we agree to speak of it as a relation of equivalence. But because this equivalence is the result of the choices made by the translator, and because the choices were governed by norms, the role of norms is crucial in shaping the text and coloring the equivalence relation. By introducing the idea of translation as a norm-governed activity, he reduced equivalence to a historical concept denoting any relation which is found to have characterized translation under a specified set of circumstances, or more fully: that set of relationships which will have been found to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate modes of translation performance for the culture in question.
It seems reasonable to strip the implications equivalence carries, namely, equality in value, an equitable exchange, or one thing being as good as another, down to a mere label, as Toury did. Then, we need take a critical look back at the close association between translation and equivalence with its full implications. Although pretending ahistorical and objective, it is culturally, or even politically defined notions and images of translation. Equivalence may be understood as a belief structure, the creation of a pragmatically necessary illusion. Our standard metaphors of translation incessantly rehearse this idea in casting translation as a transparent pane of glass, a simulacrum, and a replica. A translation may be a derived product, a mere copy and therefore secondary, but as long as there is nothing to jolt us out of our willing suspension of disbelief we assume that to all intents and purposes the replica is as good as and therefore equivalent to the real thing.
Equivalence as a normative criterion, however diluted through its subtypes, serves to control translation, to keep it in its space, in a hierarchical order, to avoid its erasure of the difference between production and reproduction which is essential to the establishment of power. By blurring the aspect of non-equivalence, of manipulation and displacement, translation sometimes covers the fact that it takes place in a context of power differentials which postcolonial studies have shown again and again. As the existence of so many two-way dictionaries indicates, this illusion holds that equivalence relationship can be readily established between languages. We can readily find in E-C dictionaries “他” and “她” as equivalents of “ he” and “ she” respectively. However, a critical interrogation of what these covers may be quite revealing. Before the 20th century, Chinese people did not find anything wrong with the word “他” which did not denote any gender distinction. However, in 1910s, they suddenly felt the urge to establish an equivalent of “ she” to fill the gap by coining a new word “她”. This reflects not an inherent defect of the Chinese language, but the inequality between the Chinese and the English languages, for instance, no translators feel embarrassed when they translate the French feminine plural “ells” into English as “they” although it doesn’t denote gender distinction. This also reflects a domestic motivation in China’s course of seeking modernity to launch a campaign of gender distinction, or rather to set power differentials in such discursive strategies.

3 Recognizibility: what the relationship virtually is
The question of whether one text is a translation of another does not depend on the prescriptive and ahistorical equivalence relationships between the two. If it is right for Toury to reduce equivalence to historical and functional concept, a blank label to fill in, can we have other way round to view this relationship?
Gut (1994) treats the label of translation as a potential aid to facilitate the correct interpretation of the translated product by the target audience. It plays a role similar to other text types, such as novel, poem essay, etc., which help to coordinate the intentions of the communicator with the expectations of the audience: when the communicator presents her utterance as a novel, this may trigger different expectations in the audience than if she called it a poem or essay. In this way, labels referring to different kinds of communication can fulfill an important pragmatic function in coordinating the activities of communicator and audience. Following Culler’s definition of literature that “[l]iterature [---] is a speech act or textual event that elicits certain kinds of attention. It contrasts with other sorts of speech acts, such as imparting information, asking questions, or making promises” (qtd. in Hermans 1999: 51), Hermans (1999: 51) suggests that we should “start from the kind of signals emitted by an institutionalized-and therefore also historical and culturally determined-label ‘translation’” and “envisage translation as promising a representation, and typically a re-enactment, of an anterior text which exists at the other side of an intelligibility barrier, usually a language barrier” (ibid., 52). A translation is then a text which usually invites the perception of relevant similarity, not sameness or identity.
Gut (1994) puts this relationship as interpretive resemblance, positing that the translation should resemble the original closely enough in relevant respects. In a similar vein, borrowing from Ludwig Wittgenstein the concept of family resemblances, Toury (1980) views original texts as containing clusters of properties, meanings, possibilities, while all translations privilege certain properties /meanings at the expense of others, and thus pushes the concept of a theory of translation beyond the margins of a model restricted to faithfulness to the original, or of single, unified relationships between the source and target texts. Family resemblances, after all, are also of many different kinds. Some family resemblances may even be such that we would not want to describe the resembling text as a translation at all but as something else. Holmes (1988) spoke of a translation as being a map of the original: an original may have many true maps for different purposes, but it remains the case the map is not the territory. Chesterman further proposes the notion of truth.

Truth describes the quality of a relation between a proposition and a state of affairs. The proposition is not the same as the state of affairs---but the one bears a recognizable relation to the other---translations relate to their source texts in a wide variety of acceptable ways, depending on a whole host of intratextual and extratextual reasons. The point is that all these relations must be true to the original, in one way or another, as required by the situation. (1997:179, emphasis my own)

The notion of recognizability, as I perceive, carries elements of both subjectivism and objectivism. A translation can be seen as a copy or betrayal (in no derogatory sense of the two words) or both of its source text depending on how we would see it. To say that we clarify the translational status of a text is rather to say we actually categorize the text and its original. This is analogous to linguistic categorization: through categorization a working equivalence is established for a particular set of cases, and this equivalence in turn establishes a working difference between those cases, and other sets of cases, for instance, a word in a language embodies a decision to treat a particular range of things as if they were the same, and then to treat everything that falls outside that range as different. The primary origin of the principles of equivalence must lie in the purposes of the speakers, for the categories originate from them: they are the ones who have set up the system for their own use. In other words, the equivalence created by the categories of a language is a functional one: those things included in category can be and are treated as equivalent for the purpose of the category even though they are not identical. Conversely, what is excluded from a category is treated differently even though some excluded things may be more similar to some members of the category than those members are to many other members of the category. Categories relate to our purposes primarily, and to the actual differences of the real world secondarily (Ellis 1993:27-44). In terms of translation, difference indicates the impossibility that TT (target text) is ST (source text), while similarity indicates the possibility that TT is a translation of ST. Their working together makes the working equivalence to secure the translational relationship between A and B. This equivalence is subject to the purpose of the community; here I would like to refer to the community in the target culture, following the target-oriented approach. That is to say, this categorization is, to a great extent, done in the framework of the target culture.

4 Behind recognizability: a translation is any text accepted as a aranslation in the target culture
This suggests a shift from the objective text to living people: it is not texts as such structured compositions in a particular language that are translations or otherwise, it is the use of such texts with a particular intention that constitutes translation. In other words, the intertextual relationship is established and maintained in the process of intentional communications by people.
It also indicates the shift from the source to the target: traditional translation studies were indeed marked by extreme source-orientedness and its preoccupation was mainly with the source text and with the proclaimed protection of its legitimate rights. Target constraints, while never totally ignored, often counted as subsidiary, especially those which would not fall within linguistics of any kind. Against this background, Toury’s concept that a translation is any text that is accepted in the target culture as being a translation is truly revolutionary. It indicates that translation is actually inscriptions in terms of the target culture instead of the source culture, that is, domestic inscriptions, as I would call them, and gives much larger scope for transnational relationship between the source-text and its translation.
Toury (1995: 81-84) exemplifies prospective vs. retrospective stances by metaphor. A prospective stance may give allowance to one of only three categories concerning the translation of metaphor: (1) metaphor into the same metaphor, (2) metaphor into different metaphor, (3) metaphor into non-metaphor. This stance may have access to (4) metaphor into 0 (i.e., complete omission, leaving no trace in the target text). But the prescriptive attitude it always assumes may lead to disregard of (4): it is not that (4) is impossible (in principle), or non-existent (in actual reality), but only that writers intent on the rights of the source text refuse to treat zero replacements legitimacy as translation solutions, or else they would do so only in the case of unimportant metaphors, or those used in unimportant texts, in source-oriented terms, of course. When proceeded from the target text, the four basic pairs listed above immediately find themselves supplemented by two inverted alternatives where the notion of metaphor appears in the target rather than the source pole: (5) non-metaphor into metaphor; and (6) 0 into metaphor (i.e., addition, pure and simple, with no linguistic motivation in the source text). The adoption of a target-oriented approach leads to an extension rather than reduction of scope, in keeping with actual reality.
The notion that translation is any text that is accepted in the target culture as being a translation carries several important implications. First, as Toury stresses that “translations are facts of the culture which hosts them, with the concomitant assumption that whatever their function and identity, these are constituted within that same culture and reflect its own constellation” (1995:51). A translation is a translation in the target culture, not the source culture. And so “ the position and function which go with a text being regarded as a translation, are determined first and foremost by considerations originating in the culture which hosts them” (ibid., 26). Translation norms do not exist exclusively in the target-culture: some may have their origin in the source culture, and some in the intercultural state inhabited by the translator. However, it is the target culture which confirms translation status.
Second, there is nothing that is absolute or permanent about translation status because of its subjective elements: the trust (as Chesterman calls it) people in the target culture gives to it is relative. Even a text quite sincerely claimed and accepted as a translation/good translation could be criticized and even rejected as such by the same culture, perhaps centuries later, as expectations change.
This further indicates that translation criticism is virtually contextualized. According to Kong huiyi (1999: 106)，the assessment of any given translation is conditioned by the translator’s status in the translation’s receiving culture; the receiving culture’s perceived needs, whether ideological or literary, at that particular point in history; and finally the literary norms current at the time of assessment. Social and cultural changes inevitably give rise to different kinds of needs, and lead to the adoption or development of new ideological and literary norms, which in turn redefine the assessment of many translations. This may somehow account for the negative assessment the post-New Literature Chinese of the turn-of –the-century translations. The late Qing period and early Republican era witnessed two revolutions, the first of which was a reshuffling or readjustment of traditional values and practices to cater to the perceived needs of the nation, while the second of which aimed at uprooting all traditional values and practices, including the traditional literary language. Translations done in this period were deprived of their social and literary context after the New Literature Movement, thus cutting out any support the late Qing period translations would have received. They are often accused of being unfaithful to the original text and ignorant of Western literature and culture, conclusions that are formulated on the foundation of post-new Literature Movement ideas about the Western literary canon and literary translation. The cultural requirement and the social context of the time of translation are conveniently overlooked.
Thus, translation criticism should be contextualized: it should not stop at a haste judgment after textual comparison before exploring the manipulating powers hidden in the target culture and make it a seemingly ahistorical final say. Further, it should be aware of possible prejudice of its assessment resulting from current social context when evaluating translations at a different historical time and bring translation to the context where it is born.
Finally, this definition should also shed light on the production of translation. Source-oriented approach may favor a retrospective orientation, which is also reflected in the bottom-up process of translation, i.e. working from source-language elements and transferring the text sentence by sentence, or phrase by phrase. However, Focusing on translation as TT production also means that translation-oriented text analysis should be understood as a TT-oriented analysis. This invites a prospective view of translation, something related to a top-down process. It starts on the pragmatic level by deciding on the intended function of the TT and asking for specific text-typological conventions, and for addressees’ background knowledge and their communicative needs. It puts the TT in the center and makes it clear that the ST is but one of the factors influencing the make–up of the TT. This is illustrated in the following figure (Schaffner 1998: 87).

Target communication situation

Addressees Text type

TT
ST Situation
Purpose

We can see from the above diagram that TT is not the result of the influence of ST, rather it is a result of the reception of the influence of ST by the target culture. Thus, the intertextual relationship between the source and the target texts joins the network of other relationships in the target culture. Viewing translation as “ an offer of information formulated by a translator in a target culture and language about an offer of information (the source text) formulated by someone else in the source culture and language” (Nord 1997: 32), Skopos theorist Vermeer calls this relationship intertextual coherence, which is considered subordinate to intratextual coherence, and both are subordinate to the skopos rule. Intratextual coherence, according to him, suggests that a translation should be acceptable in a sense that it is coherent with the receivers’ situation: the receiver should be able to understand it; it should make sense in the communicative situation and culture in which it is received. The term skopos usually refers to the purpose of the target text which once again is mainly triggered by the target culture. As he states:

one of the most important factors determining the purpose of a translation is the addressee, who is the intended receiver or audience of the target text with their culture-specific world-knowledge, their expectations and their communicative needs. Every translation is directed at an intended audience, since to translate means to produce a text in a target setting for a target purpose and target addressees in target circumstances.（qtd. in Nord 1997:12）

我的影子看见我
与自己拔河
时间象流沙一样
沉淀
那一弯月在天上
依旧将圆未圆
我还叼着一根烟
牵着你的手
从前

瞬间

我想我是忘了
穿过无风的巷口
突然想起桃花的模样
一步两步
家在前巷口在后
落花飞舞如雪
无数面容
陌生如潮涌
在家与巷口
我想起你如花容颜
就快忘了

一
今天七月十六，二零零五年，肖慧走后第三天。

今天晚上我一直在想我该怎么办呢。这个问题我们也曾满怀惆怅地讨论过，在一番缠绵之后，她问“我们怎么办呢？”这让我莫名悲伤。我们怎么办呢？那个时候我在想我该怎么办呢。我从她身上抽身而起，赤条条地到了客厅，坐在黑暗中抽了一根烟，女士烟，more。一个小时后我回到床上，她侧着身子问我“你想到办法了吗？”“你杀了我吧。”我说。她应该是笑了一声，转过身来搂着我，“我要阉了你。”接下来她的手慢慢滑下去，在我的命根子上狠狠地剪了一下，就是这样。那一刻窗外路灯的余光洒在她的肩上，头发上，有一点罗曼蒂克；她的眼睛藏在夜的深处，有点琢磨不透的神秘；她的手象一条蛇在我身上游走，有一点让我心悸的色情。她要阉了我，只是用了更残忍的手段吧。在我老家为了让牛专心地耕地，便把公牛的命根子锤扁，去了它的非分之想。她与我的纠缠，无非是要我慢慢受锤吧。那又有什么呢，生活就是一个慢慢受锤的过程，我早就已经扁啦，蔫啦。我那时该有一种歇斯底里的绝望吧。我唯一能作的就是把自己藏在更深的夜里。

我现在就关了灯坐在黑夜里，赤条条的。门与窗把这个城市的灯火关在外面。外语学院分给我们青年教师每人八平方米的宿舍唯一的好处是座落在歌乐山半山腰，而且好歹开了一扇窗。透过窗俯瞰大半个沙坪坝，很容易有一种旁观者的居高临下。我曾以各种各样的心境享受那些动与不动的灯火，想象那些隔在外面的喧嚣，间或又回到自己的记忆里，任时间象流沙一样在心底滑过。有时我想我需要的或许是这座城市，这或许是我一个人的孤独吧：我总得经营一点什么，就是残存的荒凉也好啊，这座城市和我只隔了一窗玻璃，可是它留给我的东西却这么少，要么是沉默，要么是一些乱七八糟的诉说，就这么多。所以我宁愿占领这座城市，一个人的城市，一个人的战争，就这么个结局。然而这一窗玻璃活生生地隔断了我的记忆和现实：我活在自己的记忆里，我的记忆在别处，这个城市是现实的窗外，它与我如此格格不入。我对于推开窗有着莫名其妙的向往，但更多的是根深蒂固的恐惧。电影海上钢琴师里那位一辈子从未踏上陆地的钢琴师在要下舷梯上岸的一刹那看见黄昏的城市，被那林立的高楼，纵横的道路吓了回去。在他看来，钢琴的十二个键熟悉而尽在掌握，城市无尽的可能性却让他心惊胆寒。我也是如此。我的记忆里总有细沙沉淀下来让我细细把玩，并由此想起那流逝的河流，它从何处来，到何处去，这些都让我觉得惬意。这个城市的每一点灯火我都乐意去想象，那些移动的灯火静静的穿过这座城市，奔向我所未知的地方，它不知道我的心在静静的跟着它们吧；那些不动的灯火里的悲欢离合也总是我想象力的发泄之地。但我不会参与其中。

对于我，肖慧就如这样的一座城市，我所不确定的是它里面是一片荒漠还是藏在荒漠某处的绿洲。这让我犹豫，不知道自己是要绕过它，继续自己的旅程，还是要探询它，甚至在那里驻下来。我第一次进入肖慧的身体时并无一往无前的勇气，把大部分精力用在了瞻前顾后上，所以显得力不从心，连射精时她也慒然不觉。发现我由于硬度不够滑出来时，她诧异道 “怎么就变软了呢？”她骑在我身上，意犹未尽地抚弄我老二，要它继续工作，一面安慰我说我可能没经验，这让她高兴呢。而后她有些担心地问我是不是射了，怕自己怀孕。我平躺在床上，看着这个心急如焚，絮絮叨叨的女人，心情复杂。

我自己对于早泄的了解来自于对一个高中同学的记忆。我读高中的时候有四个关系很铁的哥们，性格喜好各异，但有一点，都爱看黄色录像。一个月一次，象女人来月经一样。其中有一个叫李三的，英俊潇洒，象阿兰. 德龙，而且力大无比。每一次我得罪了他，他都会叫一声：“蒋x，过来。”我便抖抖索索磨蹭过去，伸出手，让这个混蛋捏得我杀猪似地嚎叫。在他面前我算是丧尽了男人的尊严。但每次看录像是例外。进场不到十分钟，屏幕上男男女女刚脱得赤条条，还没来得及鱼水交欢，那小子就会说：“我先出去了，在外边等你们。” 这在医学上该叫做早泄吧。今年暑假回老家，他居然结了婚，老婆长得闭月羞花，而且挺着个大肚子，那小子给乐的，真恨不得踹他屁股两脚。我说这些都是给自己打气，连他都能勃得起来，我难道还会输给一个早泄的不成。

这里的悖论在于，我要消除自己的挫败感的话，首先就得全力以赴，就得参与，那样才有可能证明自己是个大老爷们儿。但是一参与，我就得和种种可能性纠缠不清，这不是我做事的风格。我那时这样表情复杂地看着自己身上那个朦胧的身影，心不在焉地答着她的话，忽然想到对于我，肖慧该是旁观者还是参与者呢？倘若是前者，她在看着我慢慢受锤，倘若是后者，她在慢慢锤我，这两者并没有本质上的差异。她是一个善良的人，不忍心我受苦，总会参与来减轻我的痛苦吧，但是她的参与客观上说无疑伤口上洒盐，她是生活的帮凶，在慢慢锤我。

我从晚上九点起坐到凌晨五点，经历了两次日与夜的替换。夜色升起来，城市便沉静下来了，它的喧嚣在暗处涌动。透过那一点点灯火可以窥见端倪，其余的便是想象的空间了，倒像是街边的妓女，穿着欲露还掩的衣服，搔首弄姿。回到外语学院十来天了，我还是第一次坐在宿舍的窗前，熄了灯，开了电脑，就那么呆着。然后我就赶上了暴风雨。风在楼道里盘旋，发出阵阵哀鸣，直到它咣当一声撞开了玻璃门呼啸而出。而我象一片冥纸，从高山到平原，轻飘飘的拿不定主意，如果运气好的话我会被这阵狂风抛弃，缓缓落下。我把它烧给自己，以这种方式与他相濡以沫。闪电在夜空里画出一幅凄美的树形图，它的枝叶就在窗前，就那么一闪，没来得及把我变成这风景图里浓墨重彩的一笔。它这样一次又一次的尝试着，而我一次又一次的满怀期待，有一刻我甚至觉得那是肖慧在想要牵住我的手。暴雨倾盆而下时，雷雨声和在一起，象一首歌在夜里游荡，无论激越或是颓废，终难免寂寞吧。肖慧要是在就好了，她也许会孩子气的央求我“爸爸，我们下楼去淋淋雨吧”或者“爸爸，搂着我，妈妈怕。”我就会毫不犹豫地牵着她的手，在雨中跑它几趟，或者满是怜爱的抱紧她，幸福得一塌糊涂。我愿为她作任何事情，哪怕是光着屁股在闹市走几个来回，这她应该知道吧？

肖慧在上午发来短信，“爸爸，妈妈今天要去天津，你自己管好自己。”今天是星期六，她从北京去天津，在那里呆两天，跟她男朋友一起，虽然她没有提。我把自己管得好好的，睡到中午一点，吃了一点稀饭，找了一辆车去建材市场退房屋装修没有用上的厨房滑门和铝扣板。我吊在货车厢里，身体拧成麻花状，更确切的说象正要被拧干的衣服。天气过于闷热，我汗腺功能过强。路上又过于堵车，建材老板又过于抠门。这一切都让我身心俱疲。我本来应该在洗脚城，舒服地躺在空调屋里，让小妹按摩一下才对。可是我还是管住自己，回到八平米的宿舍，在水泥地上躺了半个小时，慢慢回过神来，又吃了点冰箱里的稀饭，熄了灯，坐在黑暗里。肖慧再没有发短信来，她跟她男朋友在一起，先前该是在车上，现在该是在天津，在旅馆，在床上。我没有等到肖慧的短信，我跟自己在一起，先前在车上，现在在重庆，在宿舍，在窗前。

Nord (1997:1) posits,

communication takes place through a medium and in situations that are limited in time and place. Each specific situation determines what and how people communicate, and it is changed by people communicating. Situations are not universal but are embedded in a cultural habitat, which in turn conditions the situation. Language is thus to be regarded as part of culture. And communication is conditioned by the constraints of the situation-in-culture.

So is translation as a form of cross-cultural communication. The complexity of translation, one of the most complex things in the history of the cosmos, lies in the multitude of and the delicate relationship among its relevant factors. Translation is never innocent. There is always a context in which the translation takes place, always a history from which a text emerges and into which a text is transposed. The situation-in-culture has been given much emphasis. In translation, Gentzler says:

Subjects of a given culture communicate in translated messages primarily determined by local culture constraints. Inescapable infidelity is presumed as a condition of the process; translators do not work in ideal and abstract situations or desire to be innocent, but have vested literary and cultural interests of their own, and want their work to be accepted within another culture. Thus they manipulate the source text to inform as well as conform with existing cultural constraints. (1993: 134, emphasis in the original)

Thus emerges an approach to translation that is descriptive, target-oriented, functional and systemic; and an interest in the norms and constraints that govern the production and reception of translation. According to Lefevere and Bassnett(1990), the study of translation practices has moved on from a formalist approach and turned instead to the larger issues of context, history and convention. Translation cannot be defined a priori, once and for all. What translation means has to be established in certain context. The contextulization of translation brings first culture and then politics and power into the picture. It reminds the discipline of its social relevance.

2.1 Translational Norms

Culture-oriented translation scholars would define “culture” as

a complex “system of systems” composed of various subsystems such as literature, science, and technology. Within this general system, extraliterary phenomena relate to literature not in a piecemeal fashion but as an interplay among subsystems determined by the logic of the culture to which they belong. (Steiner, 1984:112)

Seen in light of this, culture refers to all socially conditioned aspects of human life. Translation can and should be recognized as a social phenomenon, a cultural practice. The meaning of the term “translation” is codified in dictionaries, constantly affirmed by translators’ associations and by public and private discourses. Further, we bring to translation both cognitive and normative expectations, which continually being negotiated, confirmed, adjusted and modified by practicing translators and by all who speak about translation. These expectations result from the communication within the translation system, for instance, that between actual translations and statements about translation, and between the translation system and other social systems (Hermans, 1999:142).
These expectations are built in translational norms. Borrowed from sociology, the term “norm” refers to “a regularity in behavior, together with the common knowledge about and the mutual expectations concerning the way in which members of a group or community ought to behave in certain types of situation”(Hermans, 1999:163). People in a given community inevitably share ideas about the “correctness” of a particular act of behavior. There is a degree of agreement as to whether the act is “correct” in some sense, which constitutes the content of norm. What guides the behavior of individuals so as to secure the content of the norm is the directive force of a norm, a psychological and social entity which mediates between the individual and the collective, between the individual’s intention, choices and actions, and collectively held beliefs, values and preferences. Norm thus defined, is both cognitive and normative. With a degree of social and psychological pressure, norms act as constraints on behavior by foreclosing certain options and choices, which nevertheless remain available in principle. Applied to translation:

It is part of the meaning of a translation that a particular original was selected from among a range of candidates, that it was selected for translation and not for some other form of importation, recycling or rewriting, and that a particular translating style was selected, one mode of representing the original against other more or less likely, more or less permissible modes. (ibid., 141)

Behind the choices are translational norms expounded by Toury (1995), Chesterman (1997), Nord (1991) and Lefevere (1992,1998,1999). For Nord, what determine what a particular culture community accepts as a translation are constitutive conventions which constitute the general concept of translation prevailing in a particular culture community, i.e. what the users of translations expect from a text which is pragmatically marked as a translation. Embedded within the constitutive conventions are regulative conventions, which govern the generally accepted forms of handling certain translation problems below the text rank.
Andre Lefevere’s main interest lies in literary translation, not only the internal dynamic of preservation and change within the literary system, but also its mechanisms. For him, embedded in the conglomerate of systems known as society, literary system possesses a double control mechanism: one governs it largely from the outside, and secures the relation between literature and its environment, the other keeps order within it.
As for the former, the key words are patronage and ideology. Patronage refers to “the powers (persons, institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature”(1992: 15). As a regulatory body such as individuals, groups, institutions, a social class, a political party, publishers, the media, etc., patronage sees to it that the literary system does not fall out of step with the rest of the society. It consists three components, namely, the ideological component determining what the relation between literature and other social systems is supposed to be, the economic component enabling the patron to assure the writer’s livelihood, and the status component enabling the patron to confer prestige and recognition. Patronage is largely related to ideology, which he early described as the dominant concept of what society should (be allowed to be)(1992:14), and later as “the conceptual grid that consists of opinions and attitudes deemed acceptable in a certain society at a certain time, and through which readers and translators approach texts”(1998: 4 Cool

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As for the latter, the operative terms are poetics and a loosely defined group referred to variously as “expert”, “specialists”, “professionals”, and also “rewriters”. Patronage rarely intervenes directly in the literary system, but delegate control of the system to the group operating within it, such as “expert”, “specialists”, “professionals”, and also “rewriters”, so as to secure the system’s ideology and poetics. Poetics consists of an inventory component and a functional component, in Lefevere’s words, “an inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs, prototypical characters and situations, and symbols” plus “a concept of what the role of literature is, or should be, in the social system as a whole”(1992:26).
Patrons and literary experts, ideology and poetics control the literary system, and hence the production and distribution of literature. Not only literary texts are produced under these constraints, but also translations, which Lefevere puts under the umbrella of “rewriting” referring to any text produced on the basis of another with the intention of adapting that other text to a certain ideology or to a certain poetics. Besides these constraints, Lefevere lists two more, that is, the universe of discourse referring to the subject matter of the source text, the objects, customs and beliefs it describes, which may be offensive or unacceptable to the target readership; the source and target languages themselves, and the differences between them, which he demonstratively puts at the bottom of the list.
Lefevere stresses that constraints are conditioning factors, not absolutes. Individuals can choose to go with or against them. Here he refers to the translator’s ideology, namely, the translator’s personal set of values and attitudes, including his/her attitudes to the other constraints. For him, translation is a language game, embedded in norms which are implied in the game itself but not reducible to them. It is at the same time norm-following, norm-changing, norm-building and norm-creating, which in turn adds to the entanglements within and without its territory, hence certain dynamic to itself and its environment.
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2.2 Translation as Discourse: E-C Translations in the Late Qing Period

Looked at from this perspective, translation can be treated as discourse, manipulated and manipulating - in the Foucaultian sense of being speech and/or writing - something that is not innocent and unmediated, but is shot through and through with ideology (the assumptions, values and beliefs which are collectively held and which govern the way people live, think, and organize or represent their experience, whether the people are conscious of their operation or not), and that relies for its circulation and proliferation on the support of institutions (universities and schools, publishers, newspapers, libraries, etc.), and that is regulated by certain rules and conventions in its production. During the late Qing period which saw the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, translation (especially of Western literary works) was discourse pure and simple (Cheung, 1998: 141).
Translation was then grounded in ideology - the ideology of anti-imperialism, of self-strengthening through reforms, of learning from the Western. How China should learn from the Western cast a splendid spectrum corresponding to social changes in Modern China. However, what remained functioning as a touchstone all along was the guideline of “Chinese learning for the essential principles; Western learning for the practical applications” (中学为体，洋学为用). This guideline meant to preserve traditional values while adopting Western science and technology, which was expressed in terms of the traditional Neo-Confucian dichotomy of “ti” (substance) and “yong” (function): Western means for Chinese ends (于语和，1997：165).
Translation therefore received institutional backing, as witnessed in the setting up of government-run translation bureaus and training college for translators in different parts of the country, the publication of works of translation by printing presses, and the incorporation of knowledge and ideas imported via translation into the curriculum. In 1861, the Zongli Yamen, a kind of ministry of foreign affairs was established to deal with the foreign powers and related matters. In 1862, the Tong Wen Guan (School of Combined Learning) was set up for foreign languages and other nontraditional subjects. From then on, more translation institutions were set up either by the missionaries or the Chinese or the combined endeavor of both. There also sprung the organizations which translated and published Western publications, consisting of the missionary societies (for instance, the London Mission Press, the School and Textbook Series Committee), the Chinese government agencies, and privately owned Chinese publishing houses (for instance, the Tong Wen Guan, the Jiangnan Arsenal Translation Bureau, and the Guang Xue Hui). Classical studies were replaced by a mixed Sino-West curriculum. “The intellectual content of the new education, as in Japan, now contained some of the West” (Fairbank, 1989: 394). The establishment of the Tong Wen Guan in the capital, followed by that of other schools at Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc., made available the offer of a curriculum including both the classical studies required for success in the examination system and the new subjects based on knowledge and ideas imported via translation. A typical example of how discourse was proliferated via institutional support is the way the notions of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” spread in China: soon after the publication of Yan Fu’s translation of T. H. Huxley’s “Evolution and Ethics” in 1898, they became the most talked about topics because intellectuals immediately wrote newspaper articles on them and because even teenage school children were asked to write essays on the these topics.
The production of translation at that time was regulated by certain conventions, rules, or norms. The norms which governed translation also defined it: they delineated and policed the boundaries of what counted as translation. However, the correctness notions which norms kept in place were not neutral but cultural: the correct translation was a translation which accorded with expectations about what a good translation should be, but these expectations were ideologically loaded. The ideological slant embedded in norms provided us with an index of cultural self-definition. This pointed to the violence that resided in the very purpose and activity of translation: the reconstitution of the foreign text in accordance with values, beliefs and representations that preexisted in China, always configured in hierarchies of dominance and marginality. Translation in the late Qing period never communicated in an untroubled fashion because the translator negotiated the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text by reducing them and supplying another set of differences, basically domestic, drawn from the Chinese language and culture to enable the foreign to be received. The foreign texts were not so much communicated as inscribed with domestic intelligibilities and interests. The inscription began with the very choice of a text for translation, always a very selective, densely motivated choice, and continued in the development of discursive strategies to translate it, always a choice of certain domestic discourses over others.
2.2.1 The Choice of a Text
2.2.1.1 The Upsurge of Literary Translation
As the following figure indicates: modern translation history witnessed the shifts of focus in different periods: from the rise of natural sciences in the latter half of the 19th-century to the popularity of social science at the turn of the 20th-century, and then to the flourishing of fiction in the early 20th-century.

Natural sciences Social Science Literature
Appxi.
1850-1890
29.8%
8.1%
0.5%
Appxi.
1902-1904
21.1%
25.5%
4.8%
Appxi.
1912-1940
14.6%
25.5%
27.6%
(王克非, 1997：181-183)

This shift was triggered by the social changes the late Qing period witnessed. The complete failure in the Opium War brought China awareness of the advancedness of the Western countries and backwardness of its own technology, hence a domestic motive to catch up with the opponents by learning natural sciences, as Wei Yuan advocated, “师夷长技以制夷”( “learning the foe’s advanced technology to curb the foe”) (陈福康, 1998：82-84). However, while China employed a guideline to justify its only preference for Western technology, the guideline was in itself a proof of its inadequacy since Western techniques (function) and ideas (substance) were also closely tied up. As the disastrous defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 proved, China had failed to get a full understanding and make a good use of the practical nature of Western knowledge without its own foundation of natural and social sciences, and to just take the practical part while remaining unattached by Western ideas and values. The subtle working-together of the failures made it possible that the intellectuals turned to social science, noticing that the prosperity of the Western countries did not largely result from advanced natural sciences but from social science. Thus came the mushrooming of translated works in this field, introducing advanced social science in the West. The drastic change of priority indicates “a shift in the introduction into China of Western learning from the material culture of apparatus and technology to the spiritual culture of thought and scholarship” (Pollard, 1998: 33).
It was in the late 19th century that China took up the translation of Western literary works on a large scale. From 1850 to 1899, only 3 literary works were translated into Chinese, taking up 0.5% of the total. The flourish of the translation of Western literary works budded from 1890, and the translation entitled <<茶花女遗事>> of A. Dame aux Camilias by Lin Shu was the milestone of the importation of European literary works. Ever since, plenty of literary works were rendered, including those translated via Japanese versions. However, only during the 2 years from 1902 to 1904, there was an evident increase of the number - 26 Western literary works were translated, making up 4.8 percent of the total. This increase went on and finally the translation of Western literary works outnumbered that of those of sciences (including natural and social sciences) in the previous 300 years (郭延礼, 1998：11).
The upsurge of literary translation came due to the reformers’ political motive and their conviction of the would-be social function of literary translation, especially fiction translation, as I may discuss below. What might also be revealing here is why it came last. On the one hand, although the social function of literature was never neglected, yet modern China, facing desperate condition, certainly gave priority to that it deemed to bring immediate results. On the other hand, as far as Chinese literature is concerned, there was rampant sense of superiority over Western literature. Intellectuals considered useful only Western works on social and natural sciences (郭延礼, 1998：12-14).
2.2.1.2 The Upsurge of Fiction Translation
In the late Qing period appeared a unique literary phenomenon that novel became the most often translated literary form. It features quantity, diversity and priority as well. According to A Ying, the leading authority of the late Qing period literature, among the 1007 works published from 1875 to 1911, there were 587 translated works, taking up 58% (Tarumoto, 1998: 3 Cool

. There were seven kinds of novel, including the novel of love story, the historical novel, the social novel, the political novel, the educational novel, the science novel, the detective novel , among which the latter four as genres had not appeared in previous Chinese history of the novel (郭延礼, 1998：497). At the end of the Qing Dynasty, thanks largely to Liang Qichao, who declared that the novel was “ the best among all forms of literature” (“小说为文学之最上乘”) (王宏志, 2000：4), novel, previously regarded as a popular and vulgar literary form only for pastime pleasure in the Western literary hierarchy, rose drastically on the top of poetry and prose which were previously considered the most important forms.
Fiction gained its new standing largely because the new norms propagated by the late Qing period reformist elite gave priority to the educational (i.e. social) rather than the literary value of the genre. The impetus for fiction translation in the late Qing period was non-literary, and the instrument happened to be literary was initially coincidental. Liang Qichao’s advocation of revolution in fiction, formation of new fiction, and introduction of political novels, was not so much for literature or fiction itself, but was part of his political agenda. For the reformers, they wanted to convince the diehard and conservative government of the need to reform, and to mobilize the whole society to carry out such reform. And as the reform movement progressed from the late nineteen century to the early twentieth century, especially after the failure of the “Hundred-Day Reforms”, Liang and his allies turned their attention from winning over the governing elite to winning over the citizenry. The problem was how to reach the citizenry who could not read the classical language which the elite used to communicate with each other, and would not read political tracts. That is where fiction came in: they did read novels, which were customarily written in a stylized form of the common spoken language. As Kang Youwei wrote:

Those who can barely read may not read the Classics, but they all read fiction. Hence, the Classics may not affect them, but fiction will. Orthodox history may not affect them, but fiction will. The works of philosophers may not enlighten them, but fiction will. The laws may not regulate them, but fiction will. (qtd. in Wang Wong-chi, 1998: 106)

Their choice of fiction was further justified by their conviction that fiction helped greatly the political development of Europe, America and Japan. They claimed that in the Western philosophers and statesmen gave their time to writing novels in the line of duty, to guide, inform and educate - with what success it was plain to see as Europeans and Americans had colonized the world. As Lin Shu wrote in the preface to his translated version of Dicken’s Oliver Twist:

One hundred years ago, English misrule was no better than Chinese today, except for the fact that English had a powerful navy. In his novels Dickens did his best to expose social abuses in the underworld to cal the government’s attention to them, so that reforms might be introduced---then, English authorities listened to advise and carried out reforms. That is why England has become strong. It would not be difficult for China to follow her example. Much to our regret, however, we have no Dickens in our midst, no one who can write novel to make the authorities aware of the social abuses in our country. (qtd. in Wang Zuoliang, 1981:11)

Even Zohar outlines three social circumstances in which translation may maintain a primary position: (1) when a literature is at its developing stage; (2) when a literature is marginal or feeble or both; (3) when a literature contains a vacuum or finds itself in a state of crisis or at a turning point (Gentzler, 1993:116). As for the novel, three condition emerged in the late Qing period: it was marginal: the traditional novel was ranked low in the Western literary system; it also contained a vacuum when utterly debased by the reformers who advocated revolution in fiction; it was at its developing stage since the reformers advocated the formulation of “new fiction”.
2.2.2 The Discursive Strategy in Translation
An ideal translation is traditionally viewed as a perfect integration of two different texts in two cultures. According to Qian Zhongshu’s notion of sublimation (化境), it brings about a transparent foreignness without any strangeness when there disappears the mist of alien modes of thinking, speaking, and feeling associated with the source text. However, due to the asymmetry in cross-cultural communication, the translator “either leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him”(qtd. in Venuti, 1995:1 Cool

. Venuti would define these as (1) a domesticating method, namely, an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bringing foreign culture closer to the reader in the target culture, making the text recognizable and familiar; and (2) a foreignizing one, an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, taking the reader over to the foreign culture, making him or her see the difference.
“Domesticating” and “foreignizing” here are two relative terms which can only be defined by referring to the formation of target cultural context. Using the foreignizing method cannot basically change the permanent trend of domestication in translation since

the “foreign” in foreignizing translation is not a transparent representation of an essence that resides in the foreign text and is valuable in itself, but a strategic construction whose value is contingent on the current target-language situation. Foreignizing translation signifies the difference of the foreign text, yet only by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target language. (ibid., 20)

The scale from foreignization to domestication indicates a discursive stance, always loaded with ideological factors which bear on self-image and self-perception. Robyns distinguishes four basic stances, depending on whether the “otherness” of the foreign (and hence the identity of the self) is or is not viewed as irreducible, and on whether or not the receptor culture adapts the intrusive elements to its own norms: (1) “transdiscursive” stance, assumed when one culture sees another as compatible and translation is not a cause for concern or alarm; (2) defective stance, assumed when a culture reckons it lacks something which is available elsewhere and can be imported; (3) defensive stance, assumed when a culture wards off imports and tries to contain their impact because it feels they may threaten its identity; and (4) imperialist stance, assumed when a culture only allows imports if they are thoroughly naturalized because it takes the value of its own models for granted (Hermans, 1999: 89).
Translation in the late Qing period featured the frequent use of domesticating strategy, yet went to foreignizing strategy at its end. Behind this is the dazzling spectrum reflecting the functioning of a variety of factors within and without China: the change of power differentials (patrons), the focus of learning from the West, and the aggregation of invasions inflicted on. Translation during that time is truly an index. The hybridity of fiction translation incarnates multi-faceted confrontation: quality vs. quantity, the aim of the elite vs. the taste of the mass, wenyan vs. baihua, canonalized literature vs. marginal literature, the influence from outside vs. the Chinese tradition, reform vs. convention, and entertainment vs. enlightenment (王宏志, 2000：16).
According to Lefevere (1998:13-14), cultures are not likely to deal much with Others, unless they are forced to do so, and even when they do, they do it in ways of acculturation if (1) they see themselves as central in the world they inhabit, and (2) they are relatively homogeneous. Both conditions fit China in the late Qing period quite well.
As for the former, several millenniums of self-sufficiency had bred in intellectuals’ deep-seated self-esteem, which even survived the deep crisis: internal political and cultural deterioration on the one hand and the imperialistic incursions of European powers on the other. China’s eventual role of domination in the world featured the prevalent futuristic vision. Kang Youwei even composed a “Patriotic Song” with twelve stanzas, the eleventh of which runs as follows:

Only our country has the resources to achieve domination;
Who in the world is there to compete with us?
Fortunate am I to have born in such a great nation;
May our spirit and our Emperor reign long over us!

The last stanza concludes thus:

We’ll span all the five continents
And see the Yellow Dragon fly on every flag. (qtd. in Wang Xiaoming, 46-47)

As for the latter, throughout Chinese history, up to the beginning of the 1820’s, the number of those who really participated the literate culture was small: the Qing government limited both the producers and readers of literature to a relatively small coterie dominated by the court and the mandarins, and also it imposed its ideology and its poetics by making them part of the requirements to be met by those who wanted to belong to that coterie.
These factors, plus the emphasis on translation’s educational function, justify the current translators’ domesticating strategy, that is, “bringing the foreign culture closer to the reader in the target culture, making the text recognizable and familiar” (Schaffmer, 1995: 4). The special attention given to the readers of the target texts is obvious and well grounded:

Translating novels is different from translating science. Science deals with universals, and literal translation may be welcomed by the academics interested. The happenings in novels are semi-imaginary, being designed to move the feelings of the community. If a translation sticks to the surface features of the original which have no connection with our country’s politics or customs, so making it as dull as ditch-water, what value will it have, and why should the reader spend his energy reading it? (qtd. in Pollard, 1998:12)

This explains why the practice of translation in the late Qing period was such a loosely defined vocation, including paraphrasing, rewriting, truncating, translation relays, and restyling. By so doing, translations are made compatible with the current ideology and poetics. The wenyan and Confucianism of the translations in the late Qing period show that the translators were intended to strengthen the imperial culture just as its authority was being severely eroded by political and institutional developments. Most importantly, they continued translating long after 1905, when the abolition of the civil service examination removed the main institutional support for using classical Chinese in official and educated discourse. They considered their role to be “that of a guardian of the language rather than simply a contributor to the classical language and by extension, therefore, a guardian of classical civilization” (qtd. in Venuti, 1998:180). Furthermore, this activity of translation was, of course, in no way independent of the supervision from its institutional backing.
Let us just look at two Chinese versions of Rider Haggard’s Joan Haste, a fall-in-love-at-the-first-sight story between Joan Haste, a girl from an average family and Henry, a boy from a noble one. The first translation, made by Pan Xizi and Tian Xiaoshen, only kept half of the story, cutting the passages in which Joan became pregnant before marriage, and those in which Henry, despite the severe objection of his father, loved Joan (郭延礼, 1998：282; 邹振环1996：186-187), making the self-sacrificing Joan a chaste girl like a fairy. It was an immediate success, partly owing to its compatibility with traditional Chinese morality. In his translation named jiayinxiaozhuan (迦茵小传 1905), Lin also deleted much of the material that would be morally offensive. For instance, the description of the sexual relations between the protagonists is discarded in his translation and consequently the illegitimate child appears unexpected. However, he did keep more of the plot: the hero rejected his father’s death-bed wish that he marry Emma, and Joan, the heroine confronted her father directly, demanding she not be abandoned; these unfilial lovers had a secret son; after she is abandoned by her father, Joan reverses the criticisms and turns her father into the accused. Joan thus made was really a fundamental swoop on traditional Chinese morality which emphasized filial piety to the extent that filial took over all other virtues. Then it is no surprise that Lin was open to criticism from not only the conservatives but also the reformers. For example, Jin Tianhe, a vehement advocate of women’s rights, attacked Lin saying, “Men can now justify the whoring by saying ‘I am Armans Daval.’ Young women with erotic feelings can now justify the breaking of the code of charity saying ‘I am Joan Haste’.” He was worried that holding hands and kissing in public would become prevalent in China and suggested that the ancient taboos should rather be revived than condone such laxity. Zhong Junwen, another reformer, compared Lin’s translation with that by Pan Xizi and said: “where Pan Xizi tried his best to gloss over Joan’s errors, Lin had to expose her shame to the full--- Where is the propriety in this?”(Yuan Jin, 1998:26).
What is significant in the above example is that translation can create stereotypes for the Other that reflects domestic cultural and political values and they can be instrumental in shaping domestic attitudes towards the Other. Pan Xizi’s translation created such a stereotype, compatible to traditional Chinese morality. The ferocious criticism on Lin’s indicates the willingness to maintain that stereotype with a relative degree of coherence and homogeneity, willingness politically and ideologically loaded. However, Lin’s translation itself suggests

the identity-forming power of translation always threatens to embarrass cultural and political institutions because it reveals the shaky foundations of their social authority. The truth of their representations and the subjective integrity of the agents are founded not on the inherent value of authoritative texts and institutional practices, but on the contingencies that arise in the translation, publication, and reception of those texts. The authority of any institution that relies on translation is susceptible to scandal because their somewhat unpredictable effects exceed the institutional controls that normally regulate textual interpretation, such as judgments of canonicity. (Venuti, 1998:6 Cool

This constitutes the delicate situation: translation was between the pulls and pushes between the Classical Chinese system and the emerging vernacular system, and it in turn added to the pulls and pushes. The pulls, namely, the domestic cultural and political agenda that guided the work of these translators, did not entirely efface the differences of the foreign texts. On the contrary, the drive to domesticate was also intended to introduce rather different Western ideas and forms into China so that it would be able to compete internationally and struggle against the hegemonic countries. As a result, the recurrent analogies between classical Chinese culture and modern Western values usually involved a transformation of both, transformation foreshadowed by the built-in paradox in the guideline of “Chinese learning for the essential principles, Western learning for the practical applications.”
The importation of new concepts and paradigms, as indicated above, had a potential to set going the transition from ancient traditions, whether oral or literary, to modern notions of time and space, of self and nation. In fact, China at the turn of the 20th century presented a rich instance of the translator’s intent on building a national culture by importing foreign literatures. The classical Chinese system could continue if the environment was itself relatively homogeneous and secure. It could keep producing works of literature in a language no longer spoken by the majority of the population and with little or no bearing on what was actually happening in the environment. However, when that environment came under increasing pressure from outside and when new groups, such as the emerging bourgeoisie, capable of offering alternative sources of patronage, began to appear inside it, it was likely to crumble.
The pushes became more obvious when translation was enlisted in a nationalist cultural politics, aiming to build a vernacular literature that was modern, not simply Westernized, for instance, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren would take literary translation as a means of altering China’s subordinate position. Their anthology of translation, published in 1909, registered rather than removed the linguistic and cultural differences of foreign fiction. Their translations were written in wenyan combined with Europeanized lexical and syntactical features, transliterations of Western names, and Japanese loan word. However, the pushes could also find domestic source since the foreign here differing from dominant translation practices consisted of what answered to the current Chinese situation. In opposition to the comforting Confucian familiarity offered by many the late Qing period translations, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren’s foreignizing strategy were designed to convey the unsettling strangeness of modern ideas and forms. This embodied an idea of change, and a hope of realizing modernization. The heterogeneous construction in their translation was an excellent trope for change, trope of equivalence created in the middle zone between West and China. Its presence points to a much more widely based and deep-seated revolutionary process that has fundamentally changed the linguistic landscape and the actual landscape of China. Their anthology was joined by such other translation projects as the Union Version of the Bible (1919) in fostering the development of a literary discourse in baihua, which subsequently evolved into the national language of China.

我把与自己同行贴在网上后，收到各式各样的批评。有一位大概是文学评论家的玩意儿对我的想象力大加赞赏，但是指出那是下半身的想象力，而我是在用下半身写作。这倒是现今文艺界流行的一个词汇，而且饱受争议。我对于下半身，上半身的了解仅限于生理常识的范围，所以对于他们的想象力（也不知是哪个部位的）我倒真的是全身心的佩服，这当然既包括上半身也包括下半身。他倒是帮我发现自己下半身的又一用途，原来它还可以来写作！但是他告诫说由于品味太低，我得慎用，要我好自为之。就是说，上半身是有品味的，下半身则没有。这仿佛也说得过去，一位文学家如果因为脑血栓或是心脏病翘了辫子，我们自然会想到该文学家呕心沥血，鞠躬尽瘁，实在让人景仰，但是如果他不小心走火，得了爱滋或是梅毒壮烈牺牲，他的品味只怕就会遭人非议，如果他是得了痔疮脚气，痛痒难耐而死，他就死的有点莫名其妙。所以翻开大多的文学史，文学巨匠大多死于上半身（这里是想当然，本人对于文学相当于一窍不通，当然不会把心思花在文学史这劳什子上）。对于这一点我倒是心存怀疑。难道就没有文学巨匠死于精尽而亡？想想史书披露那么多文学家们娶得三妻四妾，出入烟花柳巷，难道他们都能全身而退？难道他们在精尽而亡之时猛然想起这样死有碍体面，马上抽身而起，转而得个上半身，死得品味十足？但是这样一来，上半身岂非便是导致文学巨匠翘辫子的罪魁祸首，倘若如此，我倒是觉得没品味实在是上天赐与的福分，因为我这个人天生怕死。

实话实说，我认为自己还没达到用下半身写作的境界。照常理讲，既然在用下半身写作，我的小兄弟就应该横刀立马，兴奋不已才对，但是事实并非如此，那时它安安静静，一动不动，而且往往由于坐得太久，血液不畅，它一副十足的阳痿状。

我这样开口闭口照常理讲，当然侮辱了上半身，下半身这个学术词汇。学术语言有它自身的逻辑，它是不大讲常理的，这我也知道。可是在我看来，学术，尤其是人文学术总是跟生活以某种方式联系在一起。所以在我读书的时候，我总是要它关照我的生活，希望在它的关照下，我对于我自己的生活有新的感悟，然后我可以把它写下来。我生活时当然是上半身下半身并用的。

接下来我对他说我的想象力丰富也颇不以为然，他拍马屁不小心拍在了马脚上。他可能发现我左一句在我看来，又一句在我看来，而且还引用笛卡儿老人家我思故我在的名言，就此认为我在卖弄自己的想象力。这样的冤枉我可担待不起。我这样作只是想表明我在思考，而且提醒读者那是我自己的思考。至于思考的内容是否与现实相符，我可不敢妄下定语。要是说我这样作别有用心也行。据我所知，我们这个社会对自己所言所语极其不负责任，具体的体现就是人称的滥用。一位语言学教授举例说一个领导如果要嘉奖他的下属的话，就会把他叫去，哼哈半天，然后说“我”认为怎样怎样，“我”决定要犒劳犒劳你之类，俨然是我一人之意，但是如果一个领导要责罚他的下属，就会把他叫去，哼哈半天，然后说“我们”认为怎样怎样，“我们”经过研究决定要责罚责罚你之类，而且一副爱莫能助的样子。该教授对此极为不满，讲得唾沫横飞。

病

一只猫从窗口匆匆而过
只来得及朝我冷冷一瞥
一只鸟在那里停下来
唱了一首意味无穷的歌
我飞过高山飞过平原来到你的窗前
阳光以一种难以察觉的方式接近我的记忆
两米一米
灰尘随歌而舞
把这距离洗的一干二净
一根蛛丝诡异地闪烁着生命的光辉
屋顶的一只蜘蛛冒着危险搭了这座桥
我昨晚却没有珍惜这个缘分
它只好慢悠悠地回了自己的领地
现在它在桥那头
幽怨地望着我
一根导管连着我和那个输液瓶
那莫名其妙的液体慢慢悠悠地进入我的生命
我昨晚应该是和死神在某座桥上卿卿我我
现在它却一滴两滴
把桥冲得支离破碎

昨天我上了救护车
左转一个弯右转一个弯
我就到了某个病房
前天我坐在椅子上
呆望着一张纸一支笔
我盼着一场病

I Found Myself

In the unknown recess
I found me
Falling between God and Devil
Dying for rescue from either
With respect for neither

In the known recess
I found me
Sandwiched between me and others
Pushed by unconsciousness and consciousness
Without any awareness of my destination

In me
I found life
Entangled with somethingness and nothingness
towards nowhere else
but death