Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-141) and index. - Text in English with some parts in Chinese

Introduction: Translation Inside Out

1. Norns and Norms

2. Death and Translation

3. Matteo Ricci the Daoist

4. The "First Age" of Translation

5. The Extravagant Zhuangzi

This volume examines translation from many different angles: it explores how translations change the languages in which they occur, how works introduced from other languages become part of the consciousness of native speakers, and what strategies translators must use to secure acceptance for foreign works. Haun Saussy argues that translation doesn't amount to the composition, in one language, of statements equivalent to statements previously made in another language. Rather, translation works with elements of the language and culture in which it arrives, often reconfiguring them irreversibly: it creates, with a fine disregard for precedent, loan-words, calques, forced metaphors, forged pasts, imaginary relationships, and dialogues of the dead. Creativity, in this form of writing, usually considered merely reproductive, is the subject of this book