Western Literature in China and the Translation of a Nation

This book studies the reception history of Western literature in China from the 1840s to the present. Qi explores the socio-historical contexts and the contours of how Western literature was introduced, mostly through translation and assesses its transformative impact in the cultural, literary as well as sociopolitical life of modern China.

"Shouhua Qi's new book is one of the most historically comprehensive and approachable in a body of work that prioritizes the study of translation of foreign texts in Chinese modernity and nation-building. It surveys episodes of translation and translation culture in China from the late 1800s to the present day and offers a rich body of resources for scholarship on this emergent field (of late represented by the works of Ning Wang, Luo Xuanmin, and He Yuanjian). Qi's history of the cultural and sociopolitical work of translation in China also contains within it a history of the remarkable centralization of translation in China that took place from 1880 to 1970, and the process of decentralizing translation after the Cultural Revolution; thus, it represents a truly systematic treatment of modern Chinese history through its translation movements. This book achieves a remarkable feat in accounting for and differentiating between different camps of translators, translation camps and periodicals, thought campaigns and institutional regimes of translation." - The Journal of Asian Studies

Shouhua Qi is Professor of English and Coordinator of Graduate Studies in English at Western Connecticut State University, USA.