Wei, Weixiao (2020): An Overview of Chinese Translation Studies at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Past, Present, Future. London/New York: Routledge, 233 p.

Translation activities and discourse about translation have existed in China for more than 2000 years, but the academic discipline of translation studies in China only took form in the 1980s. Since then, Chinese translation studies has developed rapidly, and China ranks fourth in the number of papers published in the discipline between 2000 and 2015 (Dong and Chen 2015: 1115). However, Chinese translation studies is still in a state of aphasia in the global arena (Ma 2019: 105). In response to the domestic demand for raising the status of Chinese translation studies and the increasing interest from the West after its four decades of development, this book is devoted to Chinese discourse on translation, both ancient and contemporary, by reviewing traditional Chinese thoughts on translation and the development of modern Chinese translation theory since the 1980s. This book is composed of seven chapters. The introduction is a meta-analysis of the literature on Western translation studies in the past decades. For this part, Wei uses Chesterman’s work (2017: 316), which observes a lack of “agreed general theory” in translation studies due to the inconsistent use of terms and the proliferation of subfields. However, as translation studies is multifaceted and international in nature, and the Eurocentric translation studies can no longer be relevant to the changes occurring in the modern globalized world (p. 6, 11), it is essential to explore translation behaviours and norms between different language pairs. Therefore, Wei believes that the new input from Chinese discourse on translation studies could enrich the existing translation theory, which is based on the Eurocentric model that dominates the present scene (p. 11). Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 review the birth and growth of Chinese translation theory. The author first gives a short overview of traditional Chinese thoughts on translation rooted in Chinese philosophy. These traditional thoughts provide guidelines for practicing and researching translation. After reviewing the foundation of Chinese translation theory, the author focuses on the development of Chinese translation theory after the 1980s, when translation studies fully developed in the West. By taking several works produced by Chinese scholars from the 1980s to the 2010s as examples, the author explores the Chinese importation process of translation studies works, which developed from simple introductions with little critical notes to timely absorptions with reflective elements and finally to the integration of Western translation theory into Chinese translation research. The author also summarizes the Chinese achievements of the past 30 years, including establishing the status of translation studies in China, defining the principles and norms of translation, expanding translation studies as an interdisciplinary subject, and making advances in literary translation and applied translation (p. 53). It is a fact that Chinese discourse about Nida’s dynamic and later functional equivalence in the 1980s has marked the beginning of a new era for the research on Chinese translation theory (p. 67). The author summarizes the three kinds of Chinese translation studies that have followed since then. First, scholars adopted ideas from imported Western theories and applied them to the Chinese context. Second, scholars rediscovered the merits of traditional Chinese translation discourse and produced new and original theories. Third, scholars started to promote research based on theory and practice from China and the West (p. 59). Chapter 2 is devoted to the first category. The author reviews the abundant literature generated by Chinese scholars on the Western translation theories, such as the equivalence theory and systematic functional linguistics. Chinese translation researchers looked into these theories with Chinese examples and initiated discussions to expand or complement them. In Chapter 3, the author looks into Chinese translation activities from both …