Our nation may be destined, because of its respect for what is foreign and its mediating nature, to carry all the treasures of foreign arts and scholarship, together with its own, in its language, to unite them into a great historical whole, so to speak, which would be preserved in the centre and heart of Europe, so that with the help of our language, whatever beauty the most different times have brought forth can be enjoyed by all people, as purely and perfectly as is possible for a foreigner. This appears indeed to be the real historical aim of translation in general, as we are used to it now. (Lefevere 1977, 88)

Here German culture, created through translation, achieves global domination, and the “respect for what is foreign” that is characteristic of the German “nature” ultimately suppresses the cultural differences of other nations by forcing the “foreigner” to appreciate the canon of world literature in German. A. W. Schlegel similarly argued that the practice of translation is synonymous with German culture: Because “poetic translation is a difficult art,” he asserted, “its

invention was reserved for German fidelity and perseverance” (Lefevere 1992, 78–79). In Lin Shu’s thinking, the universalism took the form of assuming the global validity of Chinese cultural traditions, notably Confucianism. Thus, he read the most diverse British novels as exempla of the Confucian reverence for filial piety, an interpretation that he made explicit in his habit of retitling the English texts. His version of Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop became The Story

of the Filial Daughter Nell (Lee 47).

Nationalist agendas in translation involve the conceptual violence that occurs whenever the unity of a nation is proclaimed, whether at its founding moment or subsequently in its cultural and political institutions. An assertion of national unity fictively creates that unity in the very process of asserting it by repressing the differences among the heterogeneous groupings and interests that comprise any social collective. As Derrida remarks, “the properly performative act must produce (proclaim) what in the form of a constative act it merely claims, declares, assures it is describing” (Derrida 1987, 18). Translation nationalisms are based on performative acts of this sort because they assert a homogeneous language, culture, or identity where none is shared by the diverse population that constitutes the nation. Such agendas in translation necessarily entail various exclusions, not only in drawing distinctions between the nation and its foreign others, but in privileging certain cultural forms, practices, and constituencies within the supposedly unified nation. Foreign texts are chosen because they fall into particular genres and address particular themes while excluding other genres and themes that are seen as unimportant for the formation of a national identity; translation strategies draw on particular dialects, registers, and styles while excluding others that are also in use; and translators target particular audiences with their work, excluding other constituencies.

Thus, the German translators at the turn of the nineteenth century aimed to build a national language and culture, but they actually belonged to an elite bourgeois minority whose taste dictated both the selection of foreign texts for translation and the development of discursive strategies to translate them. The translators focused on canonical works of European literature and philosophy. Johann Heinrich Voss rendered Homer, Schleiermacher Plato, and A. W. Schlegel

Shakespeare, to cite a few representative examples, whereas the great majority of German-language readers preferred translations of French and English novels by such authors as Choderlos de Laclos and Samuel Richardson (see Ward). The foreignizing method of translation, although relying on the standard dialect (High German), avoided familiar, conversational forms: “The indispensable requirement of this method,” in Schleiermacher’s words, “is a feeling for language that is not only not colloquial but also causes us to suspect that it has not grown in total freedom but rather has been bent towards a foreign likeness” (Lefevere 1977, 78–79). And although the German translators wished their translations to be read by every member of the German nation, the foreignizing method was guided by an appeal to an elite segment of the national audience; “any reader,”states Schleirmacher, “educated in such a way that we call him, in the better sense of the word, the lover and the expert” (76). The identity formed by the resulting translations was less national than learned and bourgeois.

The Chinese translators, in rendering Western literary, philosophical, and scientific texts, unavoidably displaced native cultural traditions, but they also tended to neglect foreign texts that in their view were not conducive to the creation of a resistant national identity. Because their political goal was reformist, intended to strengthen an imperial culture that had lost authority amid foreign invasion, they adopted a domesticating method of translation that resulted in diverse forms of cultural and social exclusion. Thus, Lin Shu and Yan Fu not only translated into the classical literary language (wenyan) to appeal to an academic and official elite, but in some cases they revised Western texts so as to assimilate them to Chinese values and make their nationalist agenda more acceptable to their readers. Lin Shu’s 1899 version of Alexandre Dumas fils’s La Dame aux camélias renders the French ange (angel) with the Chinese xian (fairy maiden), which evokes ancient Chinese mythology in place of the Judeo-Christian tradition (Wong 213). Similarly, when in the novel a man greets a woman by kissing her hand, Lin Shu inserted an explanatory note to anticipate the Chinese reader’s surprise at this Western practice. The identity formed by such translations could only be hybrid, not simply national, but imperial, not simply classical Chinese, but also modern and Western to some extent.

To produce significant cultural and political effects, however, nationalist movements must win the spontaneous support of a broad cross-section of the population, even if this very breadth simultaneously puts into question the notion of a unified nation. Translation nationalisms likewise cannot be restricted to the cultural elite who is most likely to devise and execute them; the translations that are designed to form a national identity must circulate widely among the diverse constituencies that comprise the nation so as to produce a nationalistic effect that might result in social change. From this point of view, the German translators’ impact was inevitably limited. Although they initiated a translation tradition that stretched into the twentieth century, inspiring such theorists as Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin, in their own historical moment their foreignizing translations of canonical texts were most powerful in forming a national identity among readers who, like them, were not just scholarly in their interests, but acquainted with previous German translations as well as German literary developments. Thus, in 1814, Goethe argued for the usefulness of a prose translation of Homer “in the first stages of education,” observing that “If you want to influence the masses a simple translation is always best. Critical translations vying with the original really are of use only for conversations the learned conduct among themselves” (Lefevere 1992, 75). Wilhelm von Humboldt’s preface to his 1816 version of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon took an opposing view, although the nationalistic tenor of his remarks shows that he was engaging in precisely the sort of learned conversation that Goethe had in mind:

What strides has the German language not made, to give but one example, since it began to imitate the meters of Greek, and what developments have not taken place in the nation, not just among the learned, but also among the masses, even down to women and children since the Greeks really did become the nation’s reading matter in their true and unadulterated shape? Words fail to express how much the German nation owes to Klopstock with his first successful treatment of antique meters, and how much more it owes to Voss, who may be said to have introduced classical antiquity into the German language. A more powerful and beneficial influence on a national culture can hardly be imagined in an already highly sophisticated time, and that influence is his alone. (137)

Given the fact that in successive editions Voss brought the German of his Homeric translations closer to the Greek and so increased the difficulty of reading them, one must doubt Humboldt’s enthusiastic assessment of their mass readership. Schleiermacher, in fact, seems to have felt that Voss’s foreignizing version was too extreme to be pleasurably readable (see Bernofsky). In Humboldt’s case, the linguistic differences of the Greek poems intensified his own national identity even as they deepened his appreciation for Voss’s translation, as well as the dramatist Friedrich Klopstock’s imitation of classical prosody.

The social impact of the Chinese translators’ work was much more consequential because it was extremely popular, extending beyond the academic and official elite that was their immediate audience to encompass independent intellectuals and both secondary-school and university students. Among this wide readership, to be sure, Lin Shu’s version of Dumas fils’s sentimental novel did not consistently elicit the same patriotic response that he voiced in drawing an analogy between the courtesan Marguerite and two Chinese ministers renowned for their devotion to the emperor. Here the cultural differences of La Dame aux camélias strengthened his nationalistic identification with imperial culture: “Strong are the women of this world, more so than our scholar-officials, among whom only the extremely devoted ones such as Long Jiang and Bi Gan could compare with Marguerite, those who would die a hundred deaths rather than deviate from their devotion. Because the way Marguerite served Armand is the same way Long and Bi served their emperors Jie and Zhou” (Hu Ying 1995: 71). Nonetheless, the nationalist agenda of the late Qing translators established a model for a later, more radical generation. Lu Xun, the modernist innovator in Chinese fiction, read their versions of Haggard and Huxley and decided to translate science fiction because he believed that Western popularizations of science might “move the Chinese masses forward” (Semanov 14). By 1909, however, he had rejected the strongly Sinicizing approach of his predecessors while retaining their project of building a national identity so as to alter China’s subordinate position in geopolitical relations. He wrote foreignizing translations of fiction from Russia and Eastern European countries that occupied a similar position, but whose literatures subsequently gained international recognition (for a detailed account, see Venuti 1998, 183–86). Yan Fu’s translations, especially his version of Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, had a much more direct influence on Chinese identity. A contemporary observer noted that “after China’s frequent military reversals, particularly after the humiliation of the Boxer years, the slogan ‘Survival of the Fittest’ (lit., ‘superior victorious, inferior defeated, the fit survive’) became a kind of clarion call” (Schwartz 259, n.14).

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