Persistence, Adaptability and Innovation—— About "Chinese Culture Going Global"

Looking at the history of civilization and cultural development in various countries, translation has made indelible contributions to continuing the blood of national culture and promoting exchanges and integration between different cultures. Since the beginning of the 21 st century, with the enhancement of China's comprehensive national strength and the continuous expansion of China's influence in the world, fundamental changes have taken place in the relations between China and the West and between ancient and modern times. One of the changes, involving China and the West, is to gradually shift from learning from the West to going out of Chinese culture, showing a trend of learning from the East to the West. The second change, involving ancient and modern times, is to shift from a fundamental break with the "old world" to a new understanding and development of China's traditional culture and Chinese national values. These two fundamental shifts have raised many new and major questions for the translation community, the most challenging of which are: What kind of "Chinese culture" does China want to show the world? How to make Chinese culture go out and walk in?

Persistence: Take the idea as the guide And pay attention to the integrity of values

"Culture is the blood of the nation and the spiritual homeland of the people." To inherit and continue China's excellent traditional culture, we must first affirm the significance of China's excellent traditional culture, realize that it is the foundation and soul of the Chinese nation, and is a fertile cultural soil for the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The report of the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the major task of "building an excellent traditional culture inheritance system and carrying forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture"; the report of the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the "two innovations" spirit of "carrying forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture, handling well the relationship between inheritance and creative development, and focusing on creative transformation and innovative development". Therefore, how to build a system for the inheritance and innovation of China's excellent traditional culture and how to realize the national strategic decision of Chinese culture going out has become one of the focus issues of common concern of the academic community.

Traditional Chinese culture is an important resource for the inheritance and development of Chinese culture, and an indispensable spiritual guarantee for national rejuvenation and national rise. Chinese classics are important achievements of civilization inherited from Chinese culture, condensing the core of the 5,000 years of traditional Culture of the Chinese nation and carrying the values of traditional Chinese culture. Chinese culture must go out, and the foreign translation of Chinese classics is the first problem that Chinese culture must solve when it goes out. The overall ideological wisdom and thorough understanding of life in the universe embodied in Chinese cultural classics have the spiritual charm of opening up to us beyond time and space, and are the foundation of the cultural soft power of the Chinese nation, which has important enlightenment significance in the current wave of global consumerism and digitalization. Therefore, we should uphold cultural consciousness and self-confidence, grasp the most core content of Chinese culture, and on the basis of in-depth and comprehensive research and overall grasp of Chinese thought, culture and literature, promote the "going out" of the most essential, excellent and most essential parts of Chinese history, so that foreign translation and introduction can form a mainstream cultural system and form a joint force of Chinese cultural values, because the deep influence of national culture on the outside world is mainly reflected in values. The influence of values is, in a way, the essential influence of a culture.

The intermingling of different mental horizons or cultural backgrounds is an ancient and realistic spiritual endeavor. In the context of globalization, the regional history of civilization has been cast into a grand world historical style, and the traditional local time-space experience of human beings should become the value coordinates with their own characteristics and style in the global experience. In the context of the international community's pursuit of dialogue and exchanges, paying attention to the ideological and holistic nature of the translation of Chinese cultural classics to foreign countries is not only conducive to the construction of an overseas discourse system of Chinese culture in the new era, but also can effectively answer worldwide questions such as where "tradition" is going in the encounter with globalization, how to uphold "tradition" and achieve "transformational creation", and provide exemplary significance for the mutual learning between ancient and modern Chinese and Western civilizations in the new era.

Response: Respond to audience needs Promote translation and acceptance of diversified interactions

The scope of "going out" Chinese culture is very extensive, only from the perspective of foreign translation and dissemination of works, including the ancient Chinese classics discussed above, involving all aspects of Chinese literature, philosophy, aesthetics, politics and ethics, which is the crystallization of the spiritual wealth of the Chinese nation for thousands of years, as well as China's contemporary outstanding literary works. When Chinese culture goes out, on the one hand, it is necessary to adhere to the roots of traditional culture, and on the other hand, it is necessary to continuously promote our contemporary fresh cultural products and cultural achievements. One of the questions that needs special attention in the process of Chinese culture going out is, what kind of culture should we show to the world? The translation of Chinese culture should be guided by correct values. All cultures with Chinese characteristics, positive upward forces, and cultures that can enrich people's spiritual life, enhance people's spiritual realm, and expand people's spiritual boundaries are all excellent Chinese cultures that can be promoted to the world.

Generally speaking, when it comes to the translation of Chinese culture, people's first reaction is the translation of Chinese classics such as Zhuzi Baijia and Confucianism, but due to the influence of many factors such as history, culture, society, ideology and so on, the dissemination and acceptance of Chinese classics overseas is not smooth sailing, and we need to continue to promote. However, we are not without joy to see that through translation, the works of contemporary writers represented by Mo Yan and Bi Feiyu have expanded a broad world overseas because they meet the needs of overseas audiences. Since the 21st century, science fiction literature and online literature have become the two major forces in the overseas dissemination of contemporary Chinese popular literature. Chinese contemporary science fiction literature inherits the genes of traditional Chinese literature, with a unique Chinese narrative, not only observes the current Chinese real society, but also reflects on the common situation facing mankind around the world, transforming literature into culture and thought, and becoming the source of universal empathy.

In view of this, we should conform to the development needs of the times, fully understand the overseas market, actively respond to their calls under the premise of knowing the needs of overseas audiences, expand the channels of literary foreign translation, form a variety of genres, rooted and dynamic translation and reception interaction, and promote Chinese culture to go global.

Innovation: multimodal communication opens up new paths for culture to go global

Cultural exchanges between China and the West can take many forms, either through official channels or purely spontaneous exchanges and interactions between the people. Objectively speaking, there are still some shortcomings in China's overseas communication market, and the way of culture going out is still relatively single. It is urgent to exert multiple forces to achieve multi-point flowering and multi-way development, and there is also an urgent need for more high-quality works that touch people's hearts, so that traditional culture can shine with the help of emerging means of communication and win the attention of the world.

In recent years, while the self-media industry has developed rapidly, it has also brought new changes and opportunities to cultural exchanges between China and the West, among which the more representative is the food blogger Li Ziqi. She became popular at home and abroad for shooting short videos of traditional Chinese cultural content, opening a window for the world to understand Chinese culture, allowing foreign audiences to feel the characteristics and values of Chinese rural culture in the scenes, emotions, words and deeds she showed, and feeling the spiritual pulse and cultural fashion of contemporary Chinese rural areas in ordinary Chinese ordinary, fresh and beautiful life. The combination and interaction between various symbol modes such as pictures, sounds, colors, videos and words can bring strong visual impact and multi-media experience to the target audience, and the ideographic and acceptance effects achieved by this innovative communication method should be more effective than the text that simply introduces Chinese culture. In view of this, the translation and dissemination of Chinese culture should use the vigorous development of visual culture to use the diversified interaction and cross-cultural interpretation between different symbol modes to provide a variety of possibilities for audiences of different regions and nationalities to understand and accept Chinese culture, and meet the world's cognitive needs for China.

"Chinese culture is a surging river, and different sections of the river have rich connotations and different aspects, including the fertile soil accumulated by five thousand years of civilization and the rapid changes brought about by the development of modernization. It is not easy to tell such a profound, complex and diverse Chinese story well. "We need to respect history, attach importance to classic readings, and find good Chinese stories from ancient classics; we need to respect the present, attach importance to overseas needs, and tell Good Chinese stories from the perspective of recipients; we need to respect the laws of communication, attach importance to updating communication channels, and spread Chinese good stories with new paths that conform to the laws of modern communication."

In the era of globalization, in the material field, in economic and trade activities, taking the initiative to go out is a norm. In spiritual exchange activities, taking the initiative to go out should also be a norm. The going out of Chinese culture is the call of the times and the inevitability of history. If the translation practice and research of Chinese classics is to adhere to the value of Chinese culture going out, then the translation practice and research of Contemporary Chinese Internet Literature is a contemporary response to Chinese culture going out, and the form of folk communication using online self-media is the innovation of the times when Chinese culture goes out. We must uphold the principle of inheritance and development, and spread the good story of China in the multi-dimensional interaction of "perseverance, adaptation and innovation", so that Chinese culture can go out and walk in.

(The author is a senior professor of liberal arts at Zhejiang University and executive vice president of the China Translation Association)

Editor: Liu Xing