Yangyang Long | Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (original) (raw)

JOURNAL ARTICLES by Yangyang Long

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2024

Contemporary China is increasingly open in its interaction with the global cultural community, ge... more Contemporary China is increasingly open in its interaction with the global cultural community, generating one of the most prestigious projects-the Royal Shakespeare Company's "Chinese Classics Translation Projects" (2015-2023). This article examines this project's first production Snow in Midsummer, a performance based on a new translation of the Chinese classic Dou E Yuan (窦娥冤, The Injustice to Dou E That Moved Heaven and Earth). Through exploring the multiple agents involved in the RSC's re-staging of the play, this article traces the processes of translation and performance characterised by an oft-hidden collaborative agency. It uncovers the collaborative agency at work and argues that the agency in this theatre production aims to set the conditions to make the original Chinese classic new, so as to enable its rejuvenation and transformation. Key finding of this article is that the collaborative agency of the translator, playwright, director, stage designer, and actors/actresses in re-staging has enlivened the 13th-century Chinese classic with enriched narratives and produced a performance that is nuanced and relevant to the contemporary world. This article makes a case for the paradigmatic shift from a product-based approach to theatre translation to a process-based one. It opens new avenues to future research into the question of complexity of collaborative agency in restaging the foreign classic to the contemporary English-speaking audiences for both areas of theatre translation for performance and transnational theatre production.

Atlantic Studies: Global Currents , 2018

This article examines how the Chinese author and translator Lin Yutang challenged the misconstruc... more This article examines how the Chinese author and translator Lin
Yutang challenged the misconstructions of China in the Atlantic
West. From the perspective of the inhabitants of the Pacific Rim,
the Atlantic is considered a symbol and metaphor for the union
of the West (Europe and North America). Due to significant
cultural and linguistic differences, China has frequently been
misrepresented by Atlantic nations. Within this context, the
leading translation theorist Lin Yutang conceived two key
translation concepts, tongshun (通顺, fluency) and zhongshi (忠实,
fidelity, faithfulness), as powerful weapons to fight against this
trend of false recognition. This article analyzes Lin’s means of
representing China by looking at (para)textual materials he
produced. It explores how Lin combines tongshun and zhongshi
to forge a space of zhongyong (中庸, central harmony), a space
that reveals the unceasing efforts in mediating, through the
translator’s balancing act, between his “Chinese Self” and
“Atlantic-Western Other.” The space of zhongyong can be read
as Lin’s creation that goes beyond the confines of strict
“surrendering” and “withstanding.” Lin’s translation of China to the
Atlantic nations therefore presents the possibility of transcending
the limits of traditional representations, and offers a renewed
understanding of the relationship between China and the Atlantic
West.

TranscULturAL: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies, 2022

This article explores how China has been imagined in Western literature and culture from the eigh... more This article explores how China has been imagined in Western literature and culture from the eighteenth century to the contemporary era, using a series of emblematic figures to examine practices of appropriation and troping. It seeks to reveal how the historical construction and representation of China is refashioned in our time, against the background of China’s rise to global power and a concomitant growing sense of doubt, fear and hostility in Europe and North America surrounding its ascendency. Two case studies are employed to elaborate on what this article considers to be exemplifications of Orientalism in Sino-Western cultural history: Daniel Defoe and Voltaire in Enlightenment Europe, and Western popular culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In doing so this article addresses how China has incrementally come to be translated and represented as a principal Other for Euro-America, and how their perceptions of, and writings about, China today echo and reinforce its translations and representations produced by the Defoe-Voltaire axis: the binary schema of demonization and romanticization. It concludes that this mechanics at work in framing China for reception and consumption by the Anglophone readership provide effective means of translating and representing China as an ideologically menacing Other, thereby begetting self-perpetuating representations.

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 2019

This article examines Lin Yutang’s self-translation of his Chinese play Zi Jian Nan Zi (子见南子) as ... more This article examines Lin Yutang’s self-translation of his Chinese play Zi Jian Nan Zi (子见南子) as Confucius Saw Nancy for the 1930s American audience, in order to explore the creativity manifested in the process of translation that secures the performability of the translated play. Drawing upon Lin’s understanding of the notion of “self-translation”, namely, what he sees as a movement between identities of his Chinese self and English-speaking Other, this article analyses three strategies that he adopts to reinvent the original text for American audiences: the mirroring-effect, musicality and stage directions. It argues that the performability of this Chinese play demands both linguistic and dramaturgical intervention from the translator. Keenly aware that a translated play, like the original, is staged by living actors for a live audience, Lin intends to create a new play that demonstrates his understanding of self-translation as what goes beyond a mere search for the equivalence of meanings between the source and target texts. This article concludes that for Lin what begins with self-translation eventually leads to an elaborate creation, and it is this creation generated by his concern with the audience over time that secures the performability of the play.

BOOK REVIEWS / INTERVIEWS by Yangyang Long

Coup De Théâtre (Annual Journal of Recherches Sur Les Arts Dramatiques Anglophones Contemporains), 2019

David Johnston's translations of Spanish Golden Age plays into English are regularly performed ac... more David Johnston's translations of Spanish Golden Age plays into English are regularly performed across the Anglophone World. In this interview with Yangyang Long, a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Translation and Interpreting at Queen's University, Belfast, he discusses theatre translation from the point of view both of a theorist and a practitioner, voices his concerns about what translation can do in the theatre today, and argues how much it constitutes a special form of writing.

BOOK CHAPTER by Yangyang Long

Monograph by Yangyang Long

Routledge, 2023

The Works of Lin Yutang is the first book to provide a comprehensive study of Lin Yutang's transl... more The Works of Lin Yutang is the first book to provide a comprehensive study of Lin Yutang's translation theory and translated (and written) works in English as a whole, examined from the perspective of his pursuit of recognition of cultural equity between China and the English-speaking world. The arc of the book is Lin's new method of translating China to the Anglophone world, which is crucial to rendering Chinese culture as an equal member of the modern world. This book identifies Lin's legacy of translation and recognition as his acknowledgement of source and target cultural territories in translation, and at the same time, his questioning of perspectives that privilege the authority of either. This book will appeal to scholars and students in Translation Studies, World and Comparative Literature, Literary and Cultural Studies, and Chinese Studies. It can also be used as a reference work for practitioners in translation and creative writing.

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2024

Contemporary China is increasingly open in its interaction with the global cultural community, ge... more Contemporary China is increasingly open in its interaction with the global cultural community, generating one of the most prestigious projects-the Royal Shakespeare Company's "Chinese Classics Translation Projects" (2015-2023). This article examines this project's first production Snow in Midsummer, a performance based on a new translation of the Chinese classic Dou E Yuan (窦娥冤, The Injustice to Dou E That Moved Heaven and Earth). Through exploring the multiple agents involved in the RSC's re-staging of the play, this article traces the processes of translation and performance characterised by an oft-hidden collaborative agency. It uncovers the collaborative agency at work and argues that the agency in this theatre production aims to set the conditions to make the original Chinese classic new, so as to enable its rejuvenation and transformation. Key finding of this article is that the collaborative agency of the translator, playwright, director, stage designer, and actors/actresses in re-staging has enlivened the 13th-century Chinese classic with enriched narratives and produced a performance that is nuanced and relevant to the contemporary world. This article makes a case for the paradigmatic shift from a product-based approach to theatre translation to a process-based one. It opens new avenues to future research into the question of complexity of collaborative agency in restaging the foreign classic to the contemporary English-speaking audiences for both areas of theatre translation for performance and transnational theatre production.

Atlantic Studies: Global Currents , 2018

This article examines how the Chinese author and translator Lin Yutang challenged the misconstruc... more This article examines how the Chinese author and translator Lin
Yutang challenged the misconstructions of China in the Atlantic
West. From the perspective of the inhabitants of the Pacific Rim,
the Atlantic is considered a symbol and metaphor for the union
of the West (Europe and North America). Due to significant
cultural and linguistic differences, China has frequently been
misrepresented by Atlantic nations. Within this context, the
leading translation theorist Lin Yutang conceived two key
translation concepts, tongshun (通顺, fluency) and zhongshi (忠实,
fidelity, faithfulness), as powerful weapons to fight against this
trend of false recognition. This article analyzes Lin’s means of
representing China by looking at (para)textual materials he
produced. It explores how Lin combines tongshun and zhongshi
to forge a space of zhongyong (中庸, central harmony), a space
that reveals the unceasing efforts in mediating, through the
translator’s balancing act, between his “Chinese Self” and
“Atlantic-Western Other.” The space of zhongyong can be read
as Lin’s creation that goes beyond the confines of strict
“surrendering” and “withstanding.” Lin’s translation of China to the
Atlantic nations therefore presents the possibility of transcending
the limits of traditional representations, and offers a renewed
understanding of the relationship between China and the Atlantic
West.

TranscULturAL: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies, 2022

This article explores how China has been imagined in Western literature and culture from the eigh... more This article explores how China has been imagined in Western literature and culture from the eighteenth century to the contemporary era, using a series of emblematic figures to examine practices of appropriation and troping. It seeks to reveal how the historical construction and representation of China is refashioned in our time, against the background of China’s rise to global power and a concomitant growing sense of doubt, fear and hostility in Europe and North America surrounding its ascendency. Two case studies are employed to elaborate on what this article considers to be exemplifications of Orientalism in Sino-Western cultural history: Daniel Defoe and Voltaire in Enlightenment Europe, and Western popular culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In doing so this article addresses how China has incrementally come to be translated and represented as a principal Other for Euro-America, and how their perceptions of, and writings about, China today echo and reinforce its translations and representations produced by the Defoe-Voltaire axis: the binary schema of demonization and romanticization. It concludes that this mechanics at work in framing China for reception and consumption by the Anglophone readership provide effective means of translating and representing China as an ideologically menacing Other, thereby begetting self-perpetuating representations.

Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies, 2019

This article examines Lin Yutang’s self-translation of his Chinese play Zi Jian Nan Zi (子见南子) as ... more This article examines Lin Yutang’s self-translation of his Chinese play Zi Jian Nan Zi (子见南子) as Confucius Saw Nancy for the 1930s American audience, in order to explore the creativity manifested in the process of translation that secures the performability of the translated play. Drawing upon Lin’s understanding of the notion of “self-translation”, namely, what he sees as a movement between identities of his Chinese self and English-speaking Other, this article analyses three strategies that he adopts to reinvent the original text for American audiences: the mirroring-effect, musicality and stage directions. It argues that the performability of this Chinese play demands both linguistic and dramaturgical intervention from the translator. Keenly aware that a translated play, like the original, is staged by living actors for a live audience, Lin intends to create a new play that demonstrates his understanding of self-translation as what goes beyond a mere search for the equivalence of meanings between the source and target texts. This article concludes that for Lin what begins with self-translation eventually leads to an elaborate creation, and it is this creation generated by his concern with the audience over time that secures the performability of the play.

Coup De Théâtre (Annual Journal of Recherches Sur Les Arts Dramatiques Anglophones Contemporains), 2019

David Johnston's translations of Spanish Golden Age plays into English are regularly performed ac... more David Johnston's translations of Spanish Golden Age plays into English are regularly performed across the Anglophone World. In this interview with Yangyang Long, a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Translation and Interpreting at Queen's University, Belfast, he discusses theatre translation from the point of view both of a theorist and a practitioner, voices his concerns about what translation can do in the theatre today, and argues how much it constitutes a special form of writing.

Routledge, 2023

The Works of Lin Yutang is the first book to provide a comprehensive study of Lin Yutang's transl... more The Works of Lin Yutang is the first book to provide a comprehensive study of Lin Yutang's translation theory and translated (and written) works in English as a whole, examined from the perspective of his pursuit of recognition of cultural equity between China and the English-speaking world. The arc of the book is Lin's new method of translating China to the Anglophone world, which is crucial to rendering Chinese culture as an equal member of the modern world. This book identifies Lin's legacy of translation and recognition as his acknowledgement of source and target cultural territories in translation, and at the same time, his questioning of perspectives that privilege the authority of either. This book will appeal to scholars and students in Translation Studies, World and Comparative Literature, Literary and Cultural Studies, and Chinese Studies. It can also be used as a reference work for practitioners in translation and creative writing.