How can translators apply postcolonial theory into their translation? Prof Mao Sihui, Director of the MPI-Bell Centre of English, Macao Polytechnic Institute, spoke of the relationship between postcolonial cultural theories and translation studies to a UIC audience on 21 October.
Prof Mao’s talk focused on the multiculturalism in postcolonial thick translation and reasserting narratives of “Chinese Experience”, with a special reference to Willis Barnstone’s translation of Mao Zedong’s poem.
“The translation studies in the postcolonial context are an ideological and intercultural mediation between critical and sociocultural forces of closure and openness, between singular hegemonic disciplinary power and the multiple resistances to this power, between conformity and subversion between Chinese and Western discourses,” said Prof Mao. “Thus, postcolonial thick translation plays a significant role in this intercultural mediation.”
The lecture was organised by the Applied Translation Studies Programme, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Reporter: Oceana Tan (ATS, Year Four)
Photographer: Vivi Xie
Editor: Deen He
(from MPRO, with special thanks to the ELC)
