Journal of Oriental Studies Volume 46 Number 2, Pages 23–40 (December 2013)

DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA:

ON LU XUN’S DUAL REGISTERS

Tong King LEE*

Abstract Stylistically, Lu Xun’s oeuvre is characterized by two distinct registers: His

own creative writing features a smooth, clean vernacular that is perfectly intelligible to
the native ear; his later works of translation, however, are replete with awkward syntax
transplanted from foreign languages. Using the concept of “habitus,” this paper explores
Lu Xun’s ideas on translation and translationese, with an eye on the socio-cultural narra-
tives surrounding their production. It argues that Lu Xun’s predilection to translationese
originated in his professional habitus as an elite intellectual, which accrued from anti-
traditionalist discourses circulating in the scholarly field in early twentieth-century China.
On the other hand, it is hypothesized that his own writings had their epistemological
roots in his initial habitus, specifically in his early training and practice as a Chinese clas-
sicist. Lu Xun’s case illustrates the conflicting dispositions of an author-translator within
the context of intense language power relations, and the complex textual behaviours that
ensue from such dispositions.

Keywords Lu Xun, habitus-governed socio-stylistics, register, narrative, polysystem.

After all, all things considered,

does the poet really choose his language?
1
― Camille Melloy

Lu Xun’s 魯迅 (1881–1936) translation discourse and practice have always been something
of an enigma. As one of the leading exponents in modern Chinese literature, he is widely
celebrated for his pioneering efforts in carving out a contemporary version of the vernacular
language, or baihua 白話, from the deep remnants of its age-old classical antecedent, the
wenyan 文言 Chinese. Lu Xun’s mastery of the modern vernacular, as epitomized by his col-

* Tong King LEE is Assistant Professor in the School of Chinese, The University of Hong Kong.
1 H.B. “Camille Melloy. Van een Vlaamschen pater die den Franschen Edgar Poe-Prijs voor poëzie won,” De
Standaard 9/6/1934: 4. Translated by and quoted in Reine Meylaerts, “Habitus and self-image of native literary
author-translators in diglossic societies,” Translation and Interpreting Studies 5.1: 10 (2010).
24 Tong King LEE

lections of short stories and essays, was judged by his contemporaries – and even by today’s
standards – as unparalleled in the Chinese world. In his preface to A Compendium of New
Chinese Literature (Part 2, Essays), Yu Dafu 郁達夫 (1896–1945), himself a prolific writer,
commented that within the essay genre in modern Chinese literature, the achievements of
Lu Xun and his younger brother Zhou Zuoren 周作人 (1885–1967) were exemplary.2
Given the excellence of his prosaic style, it is fascinating that Lu Xun’s stylistic stance
as a translator and translation theorist exhibits a divergent, and in some ways contradic-
tory, trajectory. It is now commonplace in Chinese translation studies that the hallmark of
Lu Xun’s translation is a general resistance to fluency in the target language. 3 The literary
grandmaster is seen as a representative of the “Literalists,” who rally staunchly against the
more liberal approaches to translation prevalent during the late Qing and early Republican
era.4 Lu Xun thus anticipates, on the levels of both discourse and practice and in an entirely
different cultural context, Lawrence Venuti’s thesis on foreignization.5 The ideological mo-
tivations that drive this stance, its apparent contradiction with the poetological character of
Lu Xun’s original writing and its relation to the field of translated literature in early modern
China are, however, less clear. Thus, while scholars fully acknowledge Lu Xun’s iconoclastic
position against the precedent norms in translation, to them “[i]t is still a mystery why the
Zhou brothers made this about-turn, as they had been great admirers of [Lin Shu 林紓] and
had been translating in the same free style as he had.”6 This “mystery” is attributable to what
I would call a “paradox of registers” in Lu Xun’s literary production, both original and trans-
lated. While Lu Xun’s fiction and essays display his flair for an emerging written vernacular
in its making, much of his translated prose is replete with awkward syntax that severely tests
the limits of readability – and the reader’s patience. This is a direct consequence of his ad-

2 Yu Dafu, “Daoyan 導言” (Preface), in Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi, sanwen erji 中國新文學大系：散文二集
(A compendium of new Chinese literature, essays volume, part 2) (Shanghai 上海: Liangyou tushu gongsi 良
友圖書公司, 1935), p. 15. Cited in Chen Pingyuan 陳平原, Qiannian wenmai de jiexu yu zhuanhua 千年文脈
的接續與轉化 (The continuity and transformation of a millennium of literary tradition) (Hong Kong: Joint
Publishing (H.K.) [Sanlian shudian 三聯書店], 2008), p. 86.
3 I say a “general resistance” because Lu Xun’s disposition towards literalism is relative within his translated
oeuvre. For instance, his translations of children’s literature and Japanese novels are relatively fluent as com-
pared to his other translations. See Gu Jun 顧鈞, Lu Xun fanyi yanjiu 魯迅翻譯研究 (A Study of Lu Xun’s
Translations) (Fujian 福建: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe 福建教育出版社, 2009), p. 12.
4 Liao Qiyi 廖七一, Zhongguo jindai fanyi sixiang de shanbian – wusi qianhou wenxue fanyi guifan yanjiu 中國近
代翻譯思想的嬗變 – 五四前後文學翻譯規範研究 (Shifts in ideas on translation in premodern China: A study
of norms in literary translation before and after the May Fourth era) (Tianjin 天津: Nankai daxue chubanshe
南開大學出版社, 2010), esp. pp. 198–239.
5 Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (2nd ed.) (London: Routledge, 2008).
6 Lawrence Wong Wang-chi, “From ‘controlling the barbarians’ to ‘wholesale Westernization’: Translation and
politics in late imperial and early Republican China, 1840–1919,” in Eva Hung and Judy Wakabayashi eds.,
Asian Translation Traditions (Manchester: St. Jerome, 2005), p. 127.
 DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA 25

herence to and promulgation of his signature concept of yingyi 硬譯 or “stiff translation,”7

an approach that hinges on the word/phrase as the unit of translation. It was this principle,
taken to its extreme, which placed Lu Xun in the spotlight of debates on translation in the
late 1920s and early 1930s that centred on literalism and foreignism. It also heralded the new
norm of literalism that is to influence an entire generation of translators and translation
theorists.
In view of the fact that during his formative years Lu Xun had been heavily influenced by
the translated works of Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854–1921) and Lin Shu (1852–1924), his later polemic
against their free-style translations (or what we might today call adaptations or “transcrea-
tions”) demands explanation. After all, we are told that upon reading Yan Fu’s influential
adaptation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, Lu Xun was “immediately converted” to
Social Darwinism, and that Lin’s translation of Harriet Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin had “made
a deep impression on him.”8 In this light, his radical departure from and inexorable attacks
on Yan and Lin’s legacy and unmitigated interest in “translationese” as the dominant register
for his target texts calls for attention. On the other hand, his choice of register in his own
writings is a distinctively smooth, clean vernacular that is perfectly intelligible, even elegant,
to the native ear. An explanation for this stylistic bifurcation may be sought in the constitu-
tion of the literary author-translator’s habitus.

The Habitus and Self-image of the Author-translator

The concept of habitus is central to one of the most sought-after lines of inquiry in trans-
lation studies today: how the socio-cultural field in which translators work shapes, constrains
and regulates the production and maintenance of “normative practices” within translational
activity.9 Elaborating on Bourdieu’s sociological ideas, scholars have noted how translators
are guided by “durable and transposable set[s] of principles of perception, appreciation, and
action, capable of generating practices and representation that are (usually) adapted to the
situation”10 – their habitus, in other words. Such principles or dispositions are inculcated
through translators’ internalization of social structures. Thus, it is through habitus that trans-

7 I adopt Leo T.H. Chan’s translation of the Chinese word here. See his “What’s modern in Chinese translation
theory? Lu Xun and the debates on literalism and foreignization in the May Fourth period,” TTR: Traduction,
Terminologie, Redaction 14.2: 195–223 (2001) and Twentieth-Century Chinese Translation Theory: Modes, Issues
and Debates (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004). An alternative rendition of the word is “hard translation.”
See Fernando Pérez-Barreiro Nolla, “Lu Xun’s ideas on ‘hard translation’: A historically justified case of literal-
ism,” Babel 38.2: 79–89 (1992).
8 David Pollard, The True Story of Lu Xun (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002), pp. 19–20.
9 Moira Inghilleri, “Habitus, field and discourse: Interpreting as a socially situated activity,” Target 15.2: 244
(2003).
10 Pierre Bourdieu, “Questions of method,” in Elrud Ibsch, Dick Schram and Gerard Steen eds., Empirical Studies
of Literature: Proceedings of the Second IGEL-Conference, Amsterdam 1989 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), p. 29.
26 Tong King LEE

lators “come to ‘know’ the world, not consciously, but in a taken-for-granted sense.”11 Closely
related to the notion of translational norms, the concept of habitus suggests that translational
performances “are regulated through shared schemes, which are not ‘simply there’ in their
minds but rather internalized under similar and shared historical conditions.”12 Translation
analyses along these lines thus aim to study the habitus of translation agents (of whom the
translator is one) “who have taken a position in a given target field in a given epoch” and “the
determinant factors of the target field as the site of reception of the translation.”13
More recently, in considering the textual behaviour of literary author-translators and
the processes of socialization that might have transpired in the making of their dispositions,
Reine Meylaerts argues that in a multilingual context where sociolinguistic conflict exists:
the plural and dynamic internalization of this conflict and of broader linguistic and
cultural hierarchies by the native literary author-translator translating between the con-
flicting cultures is likely to form one of the constitutive aspects of his/her habitus and self-
image, of his/her literary and translational behavior. Additionally, experiences in various
other fields (the social, political, artistic, educational, and religious) may of course con-
tribute to his/her mental and behavioral schemata.14
On the basis of this understanding, Meylaerts advances a typology delineating the socio-
linguistic tension between Dutch and French in nineteenth and early twentieth-century
Belgium. The typology postulates two scenarios whereby native author-translators exhibit
different habitus and self-images according to how they internalize the Flemish/French con-
flict “within the broader process of socialization.”15 In the first scenario, we have bilinguals
who have fully internalized the asymmetrical relationship between French, the hegemonic
language, and Dutch, the language with weaker institutional status – or, à la Pierre Bourdieu,
weaker symbolic capital. As a result, these bilinguals may, on the one hand, refuse to write
in Dutch and, on the other hand, refuse to translate Dutch literature, perceived as much less
prestigious, into French. Where such translations do take place, “habitus-governed socio-
stylistics” will be evident, such as the use of lower registers in the speech of Flemish-speaking
characters. By contrast, the second scenario describes bilinguals who resist the prevailing
hierarchy between French and Flemish. Some may refuse to translate Dutch literature into
French, for the reason that such translation would be seen as “a forfeiture of the minority

11 Moira Inghilleri, “The sociology of Bourdieu and the construction of the ‘object’ in translation and interpret-
ing studies,” The Translator 11.2: 135 (2005).
12 Rakefet Sela Sheffy, “How to be a (recognized) translator: Rethinking habitus, norms and the field of transla-
tion,” Target 17.1: 2 (2005).
13 Jean-Marc Gouvanic, “A Bourdieusian theory of translation, or the coincidence of practical instances: Field,
‘habitus’, capital and ‘illusio’, ” The Translator 11.2: 148 (2005).
14 Meylaerts, “Habitus and self-image of native literary author-translators in diglossic societies,” p. 5.
15 Ibid.
 DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA 27

literature’s search for identity and emancipation.”16 Within this ideological framework, trans-
lation, where it is carried out, will predominantly be in the French-into-Dutch direction.
Meylaerts sees her typology as “a continuum of attitudes, perceptions and positions” that
“deserves to be tested in other situations.”17 To be sure, early modern China is not the proto-
typical diglossic society that Meylaerts is concerned with.18 Nevertheless, her hypothesis that
the “habitus-governed socio-stylistics” of an author-translator is intimately tied to his/her
internalization of sociolinguistic conflict provides an interesting path of analysis into the di-
vergent registers adopted in Lu Xun’s textual practice. With this in mind, I will outline in the
following paragraphs the socio-political narratives that give rise to Lu Xun’s discourses on
translation, with an eye on how such discourses may be read as a product of the translator’s
professional habitus.

Narratives,19 Polysystems, Habitus

Lu Xun’s habitus as a scholar-intellectual was shaped by the complex interactions among

classical Chinese, the contemporary written vernacular (still in the making) and foreign
languages in early twentieth-century China. Among the educated Chinese, the prevailing
discourses of the day were characterized by two abiding and interrelated themes: a feverish
anti-tradition stance and an obsession with the (translated) foreign Other. The ideology of
nation-strengthening that dictated intellectual discourses between the final decades of the
nineteenth century and the May Fourth Era led to the massive influx of foreign knowledge. It
might have been the worst of times for China as a polity, but it certainly was the best of times
for translation.20 The instrumentality of translation, including literary translation, gave it an
increasingly high profile during this period. In the terms of the culture theorist Itamar Even-

16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Having said that, early modern China is diglossic in its own way, considering the tension between vernacu-
lar and classical Chinese (the latter represented by the Tongcheng 桐城 style of writing of which Lin Shu is
representative) in the run-up to the New Literature Movement in 1917 and the May Fourth Movement in 1919.
For an analysis of the rise and decline of diglossia in China, see Don Snow, “Diglossia in East Asia,” Journal of
Asian Pacific Communication 20.1: 124–151 (2010).
19 I am using this term as intended in social theory. For a succinct account of the theory and its application to
the study of discourses in Translation Studies, see Mona Baker, “A narrative perspective on translation in situ-
ations of conflict,” in Najma Al Zidjaly ed., Building Bridges: Integrating Language, Linguistics, Literature, and
Translation in English Studies (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 145–158.
20 For a list of major translations undertaken in the period 1840–1919, see Wong, “From ‘controlling the barbar-
ians’ to ‘wholesale Westernization’, ” pp. 132–134. For a detailed description of translational activities during
this period, see Lian Yantang 連燕堂, Ershi shiji Zhongguo fanyi wenxue shi (jindai juan) 二十世纪中国翻譯
文學史（近代卷）(A history of 20th century literature translated into Chinese [pre-modern times]) (Tianjin:
Baihua wenyi chubanshe 百花文藝出版社, 2009).
28 Tong King LEE

Zohar, we would say that the position of translated literature moved closer towards the centre
of the Chinese literary polysystem.21 This is because traditional Chinese culture (in the broad
sense) became “weak”22 in the face of a “turning point,” a “crisis” and a “literary vacuum” in
the aforementioned period. The question then arises as to why the translational norm that
had been operative during the times of Yan Fu and Lin Shu differed from that during Lu
Xun’s times, since the three eminent writer-translators were more or less contemporaries
and were apparently subject to a similar, overarching “national crisis” narrative. Nam Fung
Chang tackles this question by proposing a “domino effect” within the macro-polysystem of
Chinese culture, which is made up of various constituent polysystems:

In the social crisis induced by foreign invasion, the ideological polysystem was the first
to be shaken, but in the inception period the central systems in the political, literary and
linguistic polysystems were not yet affected owing to a delay in the domino effect. This is
why Yan and Lin chose to use Classical Chinese, the canonized linguistic-literary model,
which was a macrostrategy determined by acceptability-oriented translational norms.
It was only after the political polysystem was thrown into chaos by the collapse of the
imperial government that the whole cultural macro-polysystem became unstable, giving
an opportunity for revolutionary writers/translators such as Lu Xun to use adequacy-
oriented translations as a means to reform not only the indigenous ideological polysystem,
but also the literary and linguistic polysystems.23
The distinction between Lu Xun and his predecessors is critical, for it highlights how a
change in the acquired habitus of a translator can affect his/her socio-stylistic inclinations.
Although all three translators perceived Western learning as the antidote to national crisis,
the different epistemological contexts in which they operated led to their different inter-
nalizations of East-West linguistic hierarchy. For Yan Fu and Lin Shu, although late-Qing
China was in desperate need of Western ideas, there was nothing fundamentally wrong
with Chinese language and literature per se. To them, traditional Chinese thinking no doubt
needed revamping, but the integrity of their language and literature remained intact. To the
extent that they endeavoured to tap into foreign resources to effect socio-political changes,

21 Itamar Even-Zohar, “The position of translated literature within the literary polysystem,” Poetics Today 11.1: 45-
51 (1990).
22 Even-Zohar’s choice of the term “weak” has become the target of attack from critics of polysystem theory.
Nam Fung Chang suggests “self-insufficiency” as an alternative term to avoid the vague reference and deroga-
tory connotation of “weak.” See Nam Fung Chang, “In defence of polysystem theory,” Target 23.2: 314–318
(2011).
23 Nam Fung Chang, Yes Prime Manipulator: How a Chinese Translation of British Political Humour Came into
Being (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2005), p. 215. See also his “In defence of polysystem theory,”
p. 319.
 DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA 29

they might qualify as what Martha Cheung terms “activist translators.”24 But it is also note-
worthy that there was never any intention on their part to subvert the linguistic-literary
establishment. In this sense, Lawrence Venuti’s description of Lin Shu (and, by extension,
Yan Fu) as “a reformist, not a revolutionary” is rather apt.25
In contradistinction, Lu Xun was the quintessential revolutionary, and indeed a very
radical one at that. The fall of the dynastic regime was the tipping point that altered the
master narrative – in Chang’s words, the “whole cultural macro-polysystem” – on the basis
of which intellectual discourses were generated in the following years. It is against the new
“crisis” meta-narrative, which shifted from zhongti xiyong 中體西用 (apply Western knowl-
edge while retaining Chinese core values) to dadao kongjia dian 打倒孔家店 (eradicate
Confucian learning [i.e. all things traditionally Chinese]), that we should begin to evaluate
the significance of Lu Xun’s iconoclasm. Lu Xun was no more “progressive” than Yan Fu and
Lin Shu, during whose time translating in a non-elite language (i.e. the vernacular) was not
at all a viable option, for the dominant linguistic-literary polysystem was relatively stable
despite an ideological shake-up among intellectuals. In a similar way, Lu Xun exhibited a
diametrically different disposition as a translator and translation theorist, not because he
was a man of greater vision, as is sometimes assumed in Chinese scholarship. It was simply
because he happened to internalize a different set of linguistic hierarchies engendered by a
different master narrative, which in turn was made possible by the destabilization of the rel-
evant polysystems.

The Vernacular Project: Anglophilic Discourses

The shift in the Chinese meta-narrative led to a corresponding shift in the conceptual
narratives governing the activities of May Fourth intelligentsia, who deployed writing and
translation as tools to advance their ideological causes. Of particular interest here are the
dominant discourses on the issue of language that shaped Lu Xun’s discourses on transla-
tion. The seeds for the vernacularization of written Chinese might have been sown earlier,
but it was during the Republican era that it became “nothing less than a project for national
rejuvenation”.26 In other words, the language problematic was constructed as an intrinsic part
of China’s modernity project. While all the most active scholars of this period, including Lu
Xun, were trained in the classical language during their younger days, they were ideologi-
cally predisposed to discard it as the unwanted remnant of feudal China. With the outright

24 Martha Cheung, “Rethinking activism: The power and dynamics of translation in China during the late Qing
period (1840-1911),” in Mona Baker, Maeve Olohan and María Calzada Pérez eds., Text and Context: Essays on
Translation and Interpreting in Honour of Ian Mason (Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 2010), pp. 237–258.
25 Lawrence Venuti, “Lin Shu: Traducir para el Emperador/ Translating for the Emperor,” Trans: Revista de
Traductología 2: 143–150 (1997).
26 Chan, “What’s modern in Chinese translation theory?”, p. 212.
30 Tong King LEE

rejection of classical Chinese and the values it was perceived to embody, a partial linguistic
vacuum existed in the written language. Modern Chinese, genealogically related to the ver-
nacular used in non-canonized baihua fiction since the Song dynasty, was propagandized as
the logical alternative and popularized in the slogan wo shou xie wo kou 我手寫我口 (literally
“my hand writes my mouth”) or “I write what I say.”
The importance of the vernacular to the genesis of modern Chinese is testified in Hu
Shi’s 胡適 (1891–1962) ground-breaking manifesto Wenxue gailiang chuyi 文學改良芻議
(Preliminary suggestions for literary reform) in 1917 and other essays, in which he set the
theoretical grounds for the institutionalization of the vernacular as the written medium
of Chinese. But as pointed out earlier, this medium was very much a “work-in-progress.”
Modern Chinese as we know it today was not something directly inherited from the ver-
nacular tradition of the past. Nor was it based entirely on the predominant spoken language
of the day. It was rather constructed into being as a translingual entity.
The agenda of New Literature and May Fourth leaders was never merely to dispose of
classical Chinese but also to literally inflect the Chinese language, that is, to infuse it with the
grammatical properties of inflectional languages. While Hu Shi did not explicitly advocate
the use of Western syntax, he nonetheless admitted in a 1918 article that Western “methods of
literature” (an unclear formulation) were much superior to their Chinese counterpart.27 This
exaltation of Western literature set the epistemological basis for the production of a concep-
tual narrative of “lack,” which is evident in dominant intellectual discourses of this period.
Specifically, the syntax of the “national” language, an imagined construct based loosely on
traditional written vernacular and contemporary speech, was seen as inherently insufficient
for the purpose of nation-building and cultural rejuvenation.28 This sense of self-insufficiency
became a key motif in the cultural imagination of the elite intellectuals. The impact it had
on Chinese psyche implies “weakness” in the Chinese literary-linguistic polysystem and
had a “centrifugal effect” in culture: it prompted scholars to look toward the Western Other
as a superior model.29 In this regard, the views of the high-profile scholar Fu Sinian 傅斯年
(1896–1950), first published in 1918, are illustrative:
要是想成獨到的白話文，超於說話的白話文，有創造精神的白話文，與西洋文
同流的白話文，還要在乞靈說話以外，再找出一宗高等憑藉物。這高等憑藉物

27 Hu Shi, “Jianshe de wenxue geming lun 建設的文學革命論” (On constructive literary revolution), in Hu
Shi ed., Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi: Jianshe lilun ji 中國新文學大系：建設理論集 (A compendium of new
Chinese literature: Constructive theories) (Shanghai 上海: Liangyou tushu yinshua gongsi 良友圖書印刷公司,
1918/1935), p. 139.
28 Not all intellectuals of the time subscribed to this viewpoint. Chief among those who opposed the foreigni-
zation “movement” include Zhao Jingshen 趙景深, Qian Jibo 錢基博 and Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋. Even Qu
Qiubai, Lu Xun’s staunch supporter, did not agree with the strategy of “stiff translation” unreservedly. See Liao,
Zhongguo jindai fanyi sixiang de shanbian, pp. 201–202.
29 Chang, “In defence of polysystem theory,” pp. 314–318.
 DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA 31

是什麼，照我回答，就是直用西洋文的款式，文法，詞法，句法，章法，詞
枝……。一切修辭學上的方法，造成一種超於現在的國語，歐化的國語，因而
成就一種歐化國語的文學。

To achieve a vernacular that is original, one that goes beyond speech, embodies the crea-
tive spirit and is similar in kind to the Western languages, we need to find a point of
reference of a higher order besides looking to [our] speech for inspiration. As to what this
point of reference should be, I say it is the direct employment of the style, syntax, lexi-
cal rules, grammar, discourse pattern, figures of speech…of the Western languages. [We
need to use] all rhetorical methods to create a national language that exceeds the present
one, a type of Europeanized national language, so as to create a literature based on [this]
Europeanized national language.30
Europeanized Chinese, sometimes known as translationese (in Chinese, fanyi qiang 翻譯腔,
literally “translation accent”), is largely frowned upon today, but in early modern China it
was seen by many as the formula to produce a new breed of language, one that is dudao 獨到
(“original,” “unique”). But this prospective language is at the same time a hybrid that draws
on the resources of foreign languages for its constitution. This juxtaposition of originality
and Europeanization is not as oxymoronic as it might sound. In the linguistic imaginary of
Fu Sinian and his contemporaries, incorporating elements from European languages would
presumably allow the incubating national language to break away from the constraints of
old Chinese and thereby engender a new life. Western languages, coupled with the lingua
franca and Chinese dialects, thus became central in establishing linguistic modernity in
China. The popular view was that the Chinese language was in need to be supplemented
through the “direct employment” (zhiyong 直用) of Western linguistic resources, with the
strong implication that Chinese is deficient in and of itself. This self-derogatory perception
was corroborated by Fu’s contemporaries to various degrees. In its more extreme form, it led
to a complete debasement of the language based on fallacious, emotionally-charged claims.
Qian Xuantong 錢玄同 (1887–1939) commented in a 1918 article that Chinese writing was
pictographic (which is, of course, a faulty observation in itself) rather than alphabetic, and
therefore belonged to the mo liu 末流 or the inferior.31 Witness also Qu Qiubai’s 瞿秋白
(1899–1935) indictment against his native language:
中國的言語（文字）是那麼貧乏，甚至於日常用品都是無名氏的。中國的言語
簡直沒有完全脫離所謂的“姿勢語”的程度―― 普通的日常談話幾乎還離不開

30 Fu Sinian, “Zenyang zuo baihua 怎樣做白話” (How to write in the vernacular), in Hu ed., Zhongguo xin
wenxue daxi: Jianshe lilun ji, p. 223. Translation mine.
31 Qian Xuantong, “Zhongguo jinhou wenzi wenti 中國今後文字問題” (The future of Chinese writing), in Hu
ed., Zhongguo xin wenxue daxi. Jianshe lilun ji, p. 144. Translation mine.
32 Tong King LEE

“手勢戲”。自然，一切表現細膩的分別和複雜的關係的形容詞，動詞，前置詞，
幾乎沒有。

The Chinese language (as well as its writing system) is so deficient that it lacks names
for many everyday objects. Indeed the Chinese language has not developed completely
beyond the stage of “sign language” – everyday conversation almost can’t do without the
help of “gestures.” Of course, there is an almost complete absence of all those adjectives,
verbs and prepositions that express subtle differences and complex relationships.32
No modern linguist will agree that there is “an almost complete absence” of adjectives, verbs
and prepositions in Chinese with which to express subtle and complex meanings. It is of
course even more erroneous to claim that the presence of gestures in everyday conversations
is testimony to the deficiency of the Chinese language. Given that Fu Sinian and Qu Qiubai
were both excellent scholars and writers in their own right, it is striking that their discourses
on the Chinese language would seem to be based on emotional – dare we say irrational –
rather than empirical and logical grounds. Such apparent emotionality underscores the
language ideological tensions 33 that resided in the cultural-linguistic field of the period, man-
ifested in discourses such as those above. A possible hypothesis would be that the Chinese
cultural trauma triggered by first Western and later Japanese war victories and territorial
exploitation was so deep that it produced a kind of inferiority complex (more specifically a
superiority-inferiority complex; see below). Consequently, many intellectuals in early mod-
ern China wholly internalized the asymmetrical relation between China and the West/Japan
and projected it onto the literary-linguistic plane, thereby forming a set of beliefs about
their language vis-à-vis foreign languages. These beliefs may seem flawed, even naïve, from
today’s vantage point but they would have been extremely convincing to those “persons-in-
the-culture” embedded in an epistemological crisis over their identities. This identity crisis,
inculcated by an entire community of scholars, writers and translators, constituted the basis
for a professional habitus (i.e. a set of dispositions operating across a certain field, in this
case the cultural-intellectual field) that governed the production of anglophilic/sinophobic
cultural discourses.
This community was not homogeneous, of course. Members within a certain community
internalize social structures to various extents depending on their initial habitus, “a dynamic
and plural set of mental and physical repertoires for social behavior in life at large…shaped

32 Qu, Qiubai, “Qu Qiubai de laixin 瞿秋白的來信” (Qu Qiubai’s letter), in Luo Xinzhang 羅新璋 ed., Fanyi lunji
翻譯論集 (A collection of essays on translation) (Beijing 北京: Shangwu yinshuguan 商務印書館, 1984), p. 266.
Trans. by Yau Wai Ping as “On translation – A letter to Lu Xun (1931),” in Chan, Twentieth-Century Chinese
Translation Theory, pp. 153–154.
33 Political-ideological tensions, namely, those between right-wing vs. left-wing intellectuals, are obviously at
work too in the shaping of linguistic perceptions. This, however, is beyond the scope of the present discussion.
 DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA 33

by early socialization within structures of family, class, and education.”34 This explains why
when a new norm emerges it is usually controversial, and the most important controversy
relating to translation at this time in China has to be the war-of-words between Lu Xun and
his arch-rival Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋 (1902–1987).

Back to Lu Xun

The debates revolving around Europeanization vs. Sinicization in translation, as spear-

headed by Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu in the late 1920s and early 1930s, have been addressed
quite extensively in the literature.35 In this connection, Lu Xun has often been extolled, espe-
cially by Mainland Chinese scholars, for advocating a Europeanized approach to translation
“amid accusations and controversies.”36 Some even go so far as celebrate him for his “martyr-
dom” (shenxian shizu 身先士卒) in fighting for the survival of the Chinese language,37 hence
deifying his status in Chinese translation history. 38 The political motivations behind such
hyper-positive evaluations of Lu Xun’s translation theory are clear: Lu’s leftist affiliations,
for which he was censured by the renowned critic C.T. Hsia,39 made him the literary icon in
China (and this is very much still the case today). To my mind, these overstatements bear
testimony to a lack of attention to the intellectual context in which Lu Xun was embedded.
I hope my preceding discussion of the politico-cultural climate in China during the first
decades of the twentieth century has focused attention on the habitus-governed nature of
Lu Xun’s own discourses on translation. My central argument is that it is within a larger con-

34 Meylaerts, “Habitus and self-image of native literary author-translators in diglossic societies,” p. 2.

35 See Chan, “What’s modern in Chinese translation theory?” For a fuller account of the debates between Lu and
Liang, see Li Zhao ed., Lu Xun/ Liang Shiqiu lunzhan shilu 魯迅/梁實秋論戰實錄 (A record of the debate be-
tween Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu) (Beijing 北京: Hualing chubanshe 華齡出版社, 1997).
36 Zhu Yifan 朱一凡, Fanyi yu xiandai Hanyu de bianqian 翻譯與現代漢語的變遷 (1905–1936) [Translation and
the transformation of the modern Chinese language (1905–1936)] (Beijing: Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chuban-
she 外語教學與研究出版社, 2011), p. 104.
37 Gu, Lu Xun fanyi yanjiu, p. 21.
38 For similar opinions by contemporary Chinese scholars, see Liao, Zhongguo jindai fanyi sixiang de shanbian, p.
200.
39 See C.T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction (3rd ed.) (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1999), pp. 28–29. More recently, writing in favour of Eileen Chang, C.T. Hsia criticized Lu Xun as “a writer
who failed to put his talent to full use. We are justified to say that in terms of personal character and the qual-
ity of their works Lu Xun was not as good as Eileen Chang. When he was in Peking, Lu Xun, like Hu Shi, was
a decent man of letters. But later he surrendered to the Communists and became the leader of the League of
Left-Wing Writers. You might regard him as a great writer. But if you change your point of view you can also
see him as a running dog.” See “Xin shiji zaixian Zhang Ailing chuanqi 新世紀再現張愛玲傳奇” (The reap-
pearance of the remarkable story of Eileen Chang in a new century), Yazhou zhoukan 亞洲周刊 14.44: 110 (Oct.
30–Nov. 5, 2000). See also Hsia’s speech “Wo yu Zhang Ailing 我與張愛玲” (Eileen Chang and I), in Mingbao
yuekan 明報月刊 (Ming pao Monthly) 35.12: 38–39 (Dec. 2000).
34 Tong King LEE

text of cultural self-deprecation that Lu Xun and his contemporaries were socialized. Such
socialization internalized in them the linguistic and cultural hierarchies between China and
the West (and Japan), inculcating a powerful habitus that governed their articulation of dis-
courses on language and translation. Lu Xun had no qualms about denouncing the Chinese
language for its perceived weakness. In an essay, he declared that “the grammar of Chinese is
even more imperfect than that of classical Japanese.” Highlighting the fact that the Japanese
language had become “more amenable to translation” due to the introduction of new gram-
matical inflections, he concluded – with reference to Japanese but clearly with Chinese in his
mind – that “in the beginning [of a language’s growth], it naturally has to find the clues and
location of [its] grammar.”40 Taking cue from Japanese, Lu Xun believed that a “weak” lan-
guage may be invigorated through the importation of new (modern) linguistic devices, and
that this could be achieved through translation.
To Lu Xun, Chinese was of course the prototype of “weak” languages. Within the ideolog-
ical meta-narrative that equated weakness of the nation with “weakness” of the language (as
if a language could be proven “weak” on empirical grounds), Lu Xun’s ideas on translation
must be seen as a manifestation and elaboration of the intellectual beliefs and assumptions of
his time. To the question of whether a highly foreignized, even unreadable, translation is still
a translation, Lu Xun replied as follows:
這樣的譯本，不但在輸入新的內容，也在輸入新的表現法。中國的文或話，法
子實在太不精密了，作文的秘訣，是在避去熟字，刪掉虛字，就是好文章，講
話的時候，也時時要辭不達意，這就是話不夠用，所以教員講書，也必須借助
於粉筆。這語法的不精密，就在證明思路的不精密，換一句話，就是腦筋有些
糊塗。倘若永遠用著糊塗話，即使讀的時候，滔滔而下，但歸根結蒂，所得的
還是一個糊塗的影子。要醫這病，我以為只好陸續吃一點苦，裝進異樣的句法
去，古的，外省外府的，外國的，後來便可以據為己有。這並不是空想的事情。
遠的例子，如日本，他們的文章里，歐化的語法是極平常的了。

It is still a translation because it introduces not only new content but also new means of
expression. Neither Chinese speech nor writing is precise enough in its manner of expres-
sion. The key to good writing is to avoid clichés and empty words. Even while writing
essays and carrying on a conversation, we often find that words fail to express what we
want to say. In other words, our language is deficient. That is why teachers have to write
with chalk when they try to explain things. The lack of precision in our language proves
the lack of precision in our way of thinking – we are muddle-headed. If we continue to
use our muddle-headed language, even though we can read smoothly, ultimately we will
find ourselves confused. To cure this ailment, I believe we have to do it the hard way and

40 Lu Xun, “ ‘Yingyi’ yu ‘wenxue de jiejixing’ ‘硬譯’與‘文學的階級性’” (Stiff translation and the class na-
ture of literature), in Lu Xun, Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 (A complete collection of the works of Lu Xun) (Beijing:
Renmin wenxue chubanshe 人民文學出版社, 1981), Vol. 4, p. 199.
 DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA 35

seek to render thought in wayward syntactical structures. What is old and foreign…can
finally be embraced as our own. This is not a figment of the imagination. For an example,
Europeanized syntax is most common in the writings of the Japanese . . .41
The arguments espoused here are not essentially different from those proposed by Fu
Sinian and Qu Qiubai, cited earlier. Underlying the basic premise of their theses is the “motif
of lack”, that is, the a priori assumption that the Chinese language was deprived of elements
perceived to be desirable and was therefore in need of linguistic transplantation from the
West through translation. Not all Chinese intellectuals adopted this view to the same degree,
but neither was it a product of Lu Xun’s subjective imagination. It was rather an integral
part of a collective imagining of a new language and, consequently, a new culture. Lu Xun’s
discourses, in other words, were very much a product of his time. If there is anything excep-
tional about Lu Xun’s contribution to Chinese translation history, it would be his stoic efforts
to push the principle of literalism to the extreme and to apply his theory systematically to his
own translation practice. Any further attempt to exalt Lu Xun’s status as a translation theorist
beyond considerations of his habitus as a scholar-intellectual in 1920s–30s China can only be
superfluous.42
Lu Xun’s theorization on translation did not take place in an ivory tower; it was from the
very beginning loaded with pragmatic-political concerns. Beneath the surface-level extremity
of his arguments on language and translation underlies his desire to tap into translation “for
facilitating local cultural formation.”43 It is important to recognize this socio-political agenda,
which is at the heart of not just Lu Xun but many other intellectuals, for it explains the in-
strumentalist view towards the Chinese language that was prevalent in the critical discourses
of the time. This socio-political agenda had become so dominant that it generated a skewed
discourse that instantiated what we would now see as erroneous arguments, namely, that the
Chinese language was inherently inadequate, that this reflected a weak national character
and that the infusion of Europeanized syntax would make the Chinese language and, by ex-
tension, the Chinese people stronger than before. The erroneousness of these arguments is
worthy of our attention, not scorn, as it shows how intellectual discourses are shaped by the

41 Lu Xun, “Lu Xun de huixin 魯迅的回信” (Lu Xun’s reply), in Luo ed., Fanyi lunji, p. 276. Translated by Leo T.H.
Chan as “A reply to Qu Qiubai,” in Chan, Twentieth-Century Chinese Translation Theory, p. 159.
42 For example, the Chinese scholar Wang Yougui 王友貴 sees Lu Xun’s hard-line stance on “stiff translation” as
a strategy of “resistance” – “a call for equal international relations in trade and culture, equal diplomatic rela-
tions and translational relations.” Wang Yougui, Fanyijia Lu Xun 翻譯家魯迅 (Lu Xun the translator) (Tianjin:
Nankai daxue chubanshe, 2005), p. 172. This line of argument, strongly influenced by Lawrence Venuti (who is
heavily quoted by Wang), seems to me untenable, as it does not sit well with Lu Xun’s anglophilic/sinophobic
views on language. In view of his perception of Chinese as an inherently inferior language, it would be quite
stretched to argue that he had the intention to “resist” the linguistic hierarchy between East and West.
43 Shen Shuang, “Lu Xun, cultural internationalism, leftist periodicals and literary translation in the 1930s,” in
Elaine Yee Lin Ho and Julia Kuehn eds., China Abroad: Travels, Subjects, Spaces (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2009), p. 70.
36 Tong King LEE

master and conceptual narratives of the milieu. Following this, I am inclined to see Lu Xun’s
translation discourse (and practice) as habitus-driven rather than as evidence of a talented
individual’s iconoclasm and revolutionary vision, as is so often assumed.

A Tale of Two Registers

The epigraph that begins this paper raises an interesting paradox with respect to the bi-
lingual writer’s linguistic choice. With access to two languages rather than one, such a writer
would have more resources on hand than his/her monolingual counterpart, but does that
necessarily entail more freedom? Is his/her choice of language one of subjective will, or is
it governed by a host of sometimes invisible socio-cultural factors? Focusing on the case of
the francophone Flemish writer Camille Melloy, Reine Meylaerts advances the possibility of
a “habitus clash,” whereby the initial habitus and self-image of an author-translator is in con-
flict with his/her professional habitus: “As a bilingual of Flemish origin, Melloy tried to take
up an almost impossible middle position between the two languages and cultures involved in
the linguistic struggles, a position which was likely to lead to habitus clash.”44 “Habitus clash”
can thus be seen as a cultural dilemma ensuing from the encounter between conflicting
languages within a single writer/translator, with implications on his/her (habitus-governed)
socio-stylistics.
Let us reformulate the question to suit our present purpose: to what extent does an
author-translator decide on the type of register used in his/her writing and translation? Is
it possible for authors-translators to adopt a bipolar stylistics in respect to creative writing
and translation? If so, what are the socio-psychological motivations for such polarization?
Here, instead of dealing with two languages, we have instead two registers of a language –
one belonging to the more or less “standard” variety of Chinese and the other loaded with
translationese. If, according to Meylaerts, the literary and translational behavior of writers-
translators is in part influenced by the way they internalize linguistic and cultural hierarchies,
can the adoption of dual registers by a single author-translator be symptomatic of his/her
impasse in the face of intense sociolinguistic conflict?
Lu Xun partially conforms to the first scenario in Meylaerts’ model, outlined earlier:
he embraces the linguistic conflict between foreign (Western and Japanese) languages and
the Chinese language.45 But while accepting and indeed endorsing and promulgating the
superiority of foreign languages, Lu Xun continued to write vehemently in Chinese, and in
exquisitely fine prose at that. In so doing he seems to contradict Meylaerts’ prediction, ac-
cording to which writers-translators who have internalized the superiority of Language A

44 Meylaerts, “Habitus and self-image of native literary author-translators in diglossic societies,” p. 8.

45 The Chinese language was far from a stable entity in the early modern period (and nor is it today, one may ar-
gue). It was an imagined construct in constant flux, still in the course of being shaped up, on the one hand, by
classical written Chinese and, on the other, by the burgeoning forces of the vernacular.
 DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA 37

over Language B refrain from writing in Language B altogether. But Meylaerts’ model has
the following crucial provision: “Any translator’s habitus may be the object of confrontations
with various field logics and thus of multiple definitions and discontinuities.”46 The solution
out of Lu Xun’s dilemma, I suggest, lies in examining the tension between such “various field
logics” and “multiple definitions and discontinuities” in which Lu Xun was embedded.
In accounting for the contrastive registers observable in Lu Xun’s translated and original
writings, I venture to hypothesize as follows: on the one hand, Lu Xun’s predilection to trans-
lationese (as both translator and translation theorist) originated in his professional habitus
as an elite intellectual, which accrued from anti-traditionalist narratives circulating in the
scholarly field in early twentieth-century China. On the other hand, his own writings had
their epistemological roots in his initial habitus, specifically in his early training and prac-
tice as a Chinese classicist. It is beyond the scope of this essay to delve into Lu Xun’s socio-
biography in connection to his language dispositions,47 which deserves separate treatment.
But it is a known fact that he was highly proficient in classical Chinese: He wrote in it several
poems and a scholarly book on the history of Chinese literature.48 It may be that Lu Xun sub-
sequently turned against the tradition in which he was cultivated, but “it is important to note
that he ‘rebelled’ against the establishment after he had perfected the ‘tool of his trade’ and
not before.”49 As mentioned earlier, he was also one of the finest writers in the modern lan-
guage in his generation, famed for his “virtuosity as an essayist.”50 Stylistically, Lu Xun’s own
writings were influenced to some extent by vernacular novels from the classical tradition,
such as the Shui Hu Zhuan 水滸傳, Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅, Hong Lou Meng 紅樓夢 and Rulin
Waishi 儒林外史.51 Influences from foreign literatures were not primarily stylistic, but rather
“confined to general attitude and approach, and, as far as the literary language is concerned,
the influence could only have been indirect, for almost all the Western literary works he read
or translated were from Japanese or German translations.”52
Researchers have also pointed out that Lu Xun’s early translations were considerably
adaptive in style,53 one which he would inveigh against in the late 1920s. If this later stylistic

46 Meylaerts, “Habitus and self-image of native literary author-translators in diglossic societies,” p. 2.

47 Meylaerts stresses that “in the case of native author-translators, one might expect dispositions related to their
literary position and to their larger life conditions and social trajectory,” which calls for fine-grained analyses
of their socio-biographies. Ibid., p. 7.
48 For Lu Xun’s scholarly contributions to traditional Chinese literature, see John C.Y. Wang, “Lu Xun as a
scholar of traditional Chinese literature,” in Leo Ou-fan Lee ed., Lu Xun and His Legacy (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1985), pp. 90–103.
49 Raymond S.W. Hsü, The Style of Lu Hsün: Vocabulary and Usage (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies,
University of Hong Kong, 1979), p. 21.
50 David Pollard, “Lu Xun’s Zawen,” in Lee ed., Lu Xun and His Legacy, p. 76.
51 Hsü, The Style of Lu Hsün: Vocabulary and Usage, p. 22.
52 Ibid., p. 23.
53 Liao, Zhongguo jindai fanyi sixiang de shanbian, p. 225.
38 Tong King LEE

shift may be accounted for by changes in translational norms and the influence of politi-
cal ideologies, his earlier sinophilic dispositions may equally be seen as a result of his initial
habitus as an inheritor of the Chinese classical tradition. And if that may be the case, would
not such sinophilic dispositions still persist in his works, even as he began to subscribe to
new, anglophilic trends of thought that would govern his later thinking on language and
translation? This brings us full circle to our earlier puzzle: given that Lu Xun was so adamant
on foreignizing the Chinese language, why was his own creative prose, including his later
zawen 雜文 pieces, not Europeanized in syntax? Indeed, by producing such excellent writing
himself, Lu Xun contradicts his own claims about the deficiency of Chinese and the need for
translingual importation.54 I suggest that the rupture in register between Lu Xun’s own writ-
ing and his translations is a result of two types of habitus operating simultaneously, yielding
mutually exclusive yet complementary textual behaviours. Complex cultural psychologies
are involved here, and the following observation on conflicting translational norms (namely,
the co-existence of domestication and foreignization tendencies) in China may provide clues
on how to conceptualize the apparent paradox:

The Chinese Cultural polysystem is old and established, and is independent and self-suf-
ficient most of the time. It has been at the centre of the mega-polysystem of the region for
centuries, interfering rather than interfered with, and therefore it has a deep-rooted sense
of superiority. After a series of military defeats by Western powers and Japan in the late
nineteenth century, it came to realize that it was lagging far behind in terms of scientific,
technological and economic developments. However, some people, especially those of the
ruling class, were still proud of the central systems of this cultural polysystem, that is, its
ideology, language and literature, while some others, losing faith in these systems, wished
to change them by importing Western repertoires. For the culture as a whole it may be
said that a superiority-inferiority complex arose in that period. […] It is no surprise to
polysystemists that, when a culture has such mixed feelings about itself, there should be
conflicting translation norms.55
If an “inferiority complex” is responsible for a sinophobic stance “to be always experi-
menting with new syntax that was closer to that of the foreign language than of the native
language,”56 a “superiority complex,” then, logically generates the opposite: an unadulterated
language close at heart to the cultural roots of the author-translator. The stark disparity in Lu
Xun’s creative and translational stylistics illustrates the conflicting dispositions of an author-
translator within the context of intense language power relations, and the complex textual

54 It is interesting to note that even Liang Shiqiu, Lu Xun’s arch rival in the war of letters mentioned earlier, had
to admit that his stories and essays were written in a succinct and fluent prose. See Liang, Shiqiu, “On Mr Lu
Xun’s ‘Stiff Translation,’ ” trans. by Evangeline Almberg in Chan, Twentieth-century Chinese Translation Theory,
pp. 181–183.
55 Chang, “In defence of polysystem theory,” pp. 320–321.
56 Shen, “Lu Xun, cultural internationalism, leftist periodicals and literary translation in the 1930s,” p. 70.
 DISCOURSING TRANSLATION IN MODERN CHINA 39

behaviours that ensue from such dispositions. Lu Xun’s dual registers can thus be seen as a
textual realization of his divided self-image as an intellectual who happened to be caught in
the interstices of acute cultural transformation.  •
40 Tong King LEE

翻譯論述與現代中國：魯迅雙重語域初探

李忠慶*57

論文摘要　就語言風格而言，魯迅的文字呈現出兩種截然不同的語域特徵。其
個人創作固然曉暢易懂，其後期譯作中卻因移植外語句法而拗口艱澀之處俯拾
皆是。本文從“習尚＂的理論角度出發，探究魯迅對於翻譯及翻譯腔的觀點，
進而著眼于其形成的社會文化語境。筆者認為，魯迅對於翻譯腔的偏好源自其
精英知識份子身份特有的習尚，這一習尚形成於二十世紀初期中國學界盛行
的反傳統論述之中。另一方面，魯迅本人的寫作則可能植根於他早期的習尚，
尤其是其作為中國古典學者接受的教育及實踐經歷。據此可見，作家型譯者面
臨緊張的語言權利關係時會表現出矛盾的特質，并由此衍生出複雜的文本行
為。

關鍵詞　魯迅　習尚主導型社會文體學　語域　論述　多元系統

* 作者為香港大學中文學院助理教授