The Politics of Pseudotranslation: Constructing Viewing China through a Third Eye as a Foreign Perspective in Post-1949 China

Abstract

Pseudotranslation in China has a long history, yet such a phenomenon in Chinese contexts is seldom presented. Currently, most of the reported cases are associated with the Buddhist scripture translation in the medieval period or the scientific and literary translation in the late Qing dynasty, a period of radical social transformation. However, pseudotranslation has been barely noticed in the socialist context after the founding of the New China. While this paper holds that pseudotranslation serves for different purposes as the social situation changes, the authors select Viewing China through a Third Eye, a pseudotranslation once inviting many controversies, to support this argument.