From the perspective of the molecular movement of translation Chinese the construction of literary modernity

The great reason for the invasion of Europeanized grammar into Chinese vernacular is not out of curiosity, but out of necessity. (Lu Xun 1934a)

To translate, but translation is not the same as to ensure some kind of transparent communication. Translation should be to write other texts with another fate. （Derrida 2001）

True translation is transparent, without obscuring the original work, without obscuring the light of the original work, but allowing pure language, through the strengthening of its own medium, to illuminate the original work more fully. （Benjamin 1986）

I. Intellectual Domain Violence in Chinese and Chinese Modernity: From Salvation to Phonecentrism

Since China's defeat in the Opium War in 1842, a series of defeats have followed, and the "Western Affairs Movement" (circa 1860-1894), which originally only wanted to study science and technology and industry and did not want to study culture and system, officially declared bankrupt after the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, which also caused the collapse of dualism in the reform discourse, and Chinese intellectuals began to seek the cause of the collapse of this once glorious civilization "internally" in addition to accusing imperialist aggression. In the century-old self-criticism of the Chinese mind, "Chinese culture" and even "Chinese characters" or "Chinese" have been successively diagnosed as the basic internal causes of China's weakness. For Chinese intellectuals, "Chinese characters", as a language system that carries tradition and limits modern thinking, is the foci of "Chinese culture".

Since the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the imagination of Chinese intellectuals on modernity has always been inseparable from the reflection of words, for them, China's "modernity" is tied to "new culture", and "new culture" must have "new writing". For them, "new writing" can be said to be a kind of "writing as a technology of evolution" in China. For them, it is necessary to consciously and systematically promote "evolution", precisely because if it only follows the development of history, Chinese only the part of the extinction, so Liang Qichao has a "new law for destroying the country", while Wu Jingheng and Lu Xun have both said, "If Chinese characters are not abolished, China will die." Before Wu Jingheng committed to the implementation of phonetic symbols in the 1910s, he advocated the abolition of Chinese characters in favor of "Esperanto" or the direct adoption of a certain European language, because he believed that in order to catch up on the "evolutionary line" of mankind, of course, it was necessary to use progressive languages rather than use oxcarts (Chinese characters) to chase cars (Owen) (Wu Jingheng 1918: 505). The multifaceted efforts of Chinese reform formed a core of China's concept of "modernity," which included a wide range of vernacular literature, simplified characters, various pinyin schemes, and the Europeanization of syntax and grammar. In particular, Europeanized syntax was given the heavy responsibility of "modernizing" China's "confused" way of thinking by Lu Xun, Fu Sinian, Qu Qiubai and others. This concept of modernity can be called a kind of "linguistic modernity". To a large extent, this is also a kind of "translational modernity," both in the narrow and broad sense of translation. However, this does not mean that Chinese linguistic modernity is only a translation of European modernity, but rather that it is a modernity that is imagined, leapfrogged, transformed and created in the process of cultural translation. As Tani E. Barlow (1997: 6), an American scholar of modern Chinese history, points out, the writing of "non-European" modernity often begins with a break away from the traditional European concept of modernity, starting from a theoretical framework of "colonial modernity" and focusing on the historical specificity of the colonial experience of non-European countries. As far as the concept and construction of "modernity" is concerned, the entire practice of Chinese reform can be said to have far-reaching cultural influences. However, while scholars from all walks of life generally note the relationship between vernacular literature and the New Culture Movement and the construction of Chinese nationalism and individualism, they often overlook the key role played by the discourse of language reform itself in the process of "modernity" and "Westernization" in China. In recent years, many Chinese linguists have begun to reflect on the contributions and misleading Western paradigms and scientism to modern Chinese linguistics, and have proposed a research orientation based on the unique structure of Chinese characters (e.g., Xu Tongqiang 1994; Shen Xiaolong 1985; Pan Wenguo 2002 et al.). However, such reflection is still mainly limited to the problem consciousness of "Chinese studies", and in the social science research of "Westernization" and "modernity", the discourse of Chinese reform has always been extremely marginal, let alone tested in a stripped-down manner. The purpose of this article is to put the question of linguistic modernity back at the heart of China's modernity project. This must first attempt to return to the field of discourse on "modernity" in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Many scholars, such as the historian Lin Yusheng (Lin 1979), have attributed the New Culture Movement's reliance on language to a kind of cultural idealism or cultural instrumentalism that "solves problems through ideology and culture." Such a label, if not entirely wrong, probably misses its specific historical context, namely the specific "epistemic violence" that Chinese intellectuals encountered at the time. The concept of "intellectual violence" was coined by contemporary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1996: 128-129). She extended on the use of "episté" by Michel Foucault (1970) (1972) in The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse of Language and The Order of Things (1972) in The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse of Language and The Order of Things. mè； This concept is an attempt to analyze the history of Western knowledge. "Intellectual violence" refers to the fact that when non-Western countries face powerful Western imperialist aggression and colonial forces, in addition to political, economic and military impacts, they will inevitably encounter a powerful "violence of thought". This kind of ideological violence often has a subversive and dynamic effect on the existing cultural politics. It is an "enabling violence", that is, destroying the intellectual roots and cultural self-confidence of intellectuals, but also opening up a space for its victims to disassemble, negotiate and rebuild cultural elements. In other words, it forces intellectuals to actively rebuild their cultural knowledge domain without roots in a passive shock. This is exactly the situation faced by modern Chinese intellectuals. Therefore, I believe that we must return to this specific intellectual field of violence from a point of view, and re-examine the "linguistic modernity" project of the New Culture Movement, in order to concretely grasp its historical significance.

From the perspective of the multifaceted efforts and discourses of Chinese reform, this "intellectual violence" has always revolved around a special, postcolonial version of phonocentrism, that is, around a central theme: "The pinyin writing of European variant grammar is a relatively precise and scientific system, while the "non-phonetic" writing of Chinese is a relatively inaccurate and unscientific backward system." This is fully manifested in the pursuit of two aspects over the past 100 years of Chinese reform, one is the pursuit of the "pinyin system" and the other is the pursuit of the so-called "accurate grammar". In fact, in the field of the comprehensive Westernization and Europeanization of language in the early twentieth century, we will find that the Chinese neoculturalists have inadvertently grasped what the French philosopher Jacques Derrida called logophonocentrism, the core of the Western "western metaphysics of presence." This manifestation of "speech" as "inner reason" [the voice of God] and the debasement of "writing" as an external complement constitutes Western philosophy as a domain of knowledge (episté; mè； ), at the same time, makes the so-called "truth" a kind of "unity of logos and phoné; ）（Derrida 1974， 1980）。 In other words, "reason" and "discourse" are inseparable, logos and phoné; Intertwined in the concept of "interiority," "writing" is always secondary, external, complementary, imagery. If "discourse" is the "representation" of "reason" and the "sign" of reason, "writing" is "representation of representation," "the sign of sign." This logocentric dialonocentrism, as well as the theory of linguistic "representation," can be traced back to Greek philosophy more than 2,000 years ago and its theological tradition. It must be noted that concepts such as "discourse" and "writing" in this context are definitely not culturally neutral, but already carry the cultural specificities of Western philosophy. This point cannot be ignored in the following discussion of this article, because, in the construction of Chinese and Chinese modernity, the translation of such key concepts sometimes highlights their cultural specificity, but often loses this specificity in the cultural strategy of universalism.

In Of Grammatology, Derrida (1974) pointed out that modern Western linguistics, represented by Ferdinand de Saussure, did not get rid of the shackles of Western metaphysics under the cloak of "scientificity", on the contrary, it inherited the philosophy of language since the Greek philosophy Plato, Aristotle, Lucau, and Hegel, with speech as the inner expression of reason. Instead, it has always been a phonologism, based entirely on the European phonetic script model to build a theory of "writing."

It is worth exploring the question: does the modern Chinese reform based on phonecentrism as a postcolonial intellectual domain violence caused by imperialist aggression only "copy" the logocentric of the core of the Western metaphysical knowledge domain?

To understand the connections and differences between Western phonetic neutralism and non-Western phonetic-centrism, I think it is useful to put Dehida's deconstruction of Western metaphysics in a postcolonial context, and the century-old reform of Chinese language provides an excellent field of discourse. Conversely, this is also the practice of re-examining the modernity of Chinese and Chinese from the perspective of "deconstructing Western culture", and will also help us understand the operation of the knowledge domain involved in Chinese language reform. Therefore, this article is written in a two-line way: putting "West" into the "non-Western" situation, and putting "China" into the larger context of "non-Chinese". This reflection on the double line may also be regarded as the first exploration of an attempt to deconstruct the binary opposition between China and the West.

Dechida's internal deconstruction of the "West" and the cultural translation of "Logos" by "non-Western"

Is "non-Western" "phonecentrism" necessarily the result of a postcolonial intellectual violence, or can some kind of "inherent" phonecentrism also be found in the "non-Western" tradition? First, the binary distinction between the so-called "Western" and "non-Western" is obviously too rough, especially since the remaining category of "non-Western" contains too many cultural and written traditions of different nature, form and development, and should not be confused. For example, there are huge differences between India and China, both in terms of cultural traditions and writing systems. The Indian pinyin writing system is very detailed, and its degree of phoneticization is comparable to that of European languages, while the Chinese writing system is a "zhuyin script" with both sound and image. Second, the conceptual overlap between "logocentrism" and "phonetic-centrism" can be traced back to the Greek etymology of logos. The word logos has a strong phoné; Meaning - But the two are not synonymous, logos have many meanings, in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, logos mean the principle of operation of the universe or human understanding of this principle, for the Sophists, rational debate itself is logos, for the Stoics, logos are both the rational operating principle of the universe, the source of all activity and all things, and the rational root of the human soul, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Logos are God's Word, which itself has the power to create. The question of "naming," to which Desida attaches particular importance, sits to a large extent in the same Western theological context of "discourse" and "creation." "Nouns and discourses, the unity of breath and concept, are erased in pure writing" (Derrida 1974: 26).

In other words, the word logos carries the genealogy and changes inherited from Western metaphysics, but it is always the same as phoné; There is "the original and essential link" (Derrida 1974: 11). But this does not mean that all emphasis on speech (as opposed to writing) is a kind of "logocentrism". Unlike the relatively neutral term "phonecentrism", "logocentrism" is a culturally specific concept. Logocentrism is phonecentrism in nature, which is a cultural fact of Western metaphysics for Dehida, but phonecentrism is not necessarily a logocentrism. However, in his early work The Study of Writing (published in 1967 in French), De Sida hardly distinguished between phonetic-centrism and logocentrism, and regarded it as the dual-in-one core of "Western" metaphysics, whether discussing Freud's mode of writing of mind or Husserl's phenomenology of sound, which he called a kind of "logocentric phonology." （logophonocentrism）（Derrida 1980， 1973）。 For him, the Western character of logocentric phoneticism is clear. Thus, he once said that his interest in non-Western writing, such as Chinese, was mainly in its "non-phonetic" part (Derrida 2001:11). This, however, ironically brought him closer to the philosophers of Western languages to whom he himself was critical in his academic approach to "non-Western" writing. The difference also seems to be reduced to a moral level—that is, to degrade or praise such "non-phonetic" parts.

Thus, in Graphy, he made a controversial but not surprising statement: writings such as Chinese or Japanese, which are still primarily "ideogram or algebra" in structure, have confirmed the existence of a powerful civilizational force "outside of all logocentrism" (Derrida 1974: 90). Spipperk, the English translator of The Book of Writing, questioned this claim:

Paradoxically, in an almost reverse ethnocentrism, Dehida insisted that Logosianism was the property of the West. His approach is so pervasive that it does not need to be quoted at all. Although he discusses Western Chinese prejudices in the first part of the book, De Sidda's essay never seriously studies or deconstructs the "East." In this case, why bother to follow Hegel and Nietzsche's closest pictorial humor, using the name "East" as the boundary of textual knowledge? (Spivak 1974: lxxxii)

In the above quote, Spicetrick is almost saying that De Sida has not been able to deconstruct his own "oriental bias" or "orientalism." Orientalism, as defined by Edward Said (1978: 2), is a style of thinking based on the existential and epistemological distinction between "East" and "West." This Orientalism is a strategy of discourse under the umbrella of "Western Hegemony" (Said 1978: 6-7). Therefore, in defining the essential difference between "East" and "West", it is to use "East" as the boundary of the intellectual text of "West". De Sida deconstructs the intellectual tradition he calls "Western presence metaphysics," which he criticizes logocentric in this tradition, deconstructs the three "prejudices" of the eighteenth-century European philosophers of language against the other, including the Chinese, Egyptian Eucharist, and Hebrew ahistorical prejudices, points out the racist tendency of the Western linguistic and anthropological traditions to use pinyin writing as a model for "history writing," and he deconstructs "historicity." (historicity) The racial bias of the concept itself (Derrida 1974). All of this allowed him to deconstruct the West's philosophical project and gain an affinity with a postcolonial perspective. But he himself always seems to have at certain critical junctures to draw the boundaries of the "West" that he intends to deconstruct with a considerable degree of essentialized and existential "non-Western"—"writing like Chinese or Japanese, which is still structurally still largely ideograms". To borrow Sayed's phrase, the "West" in the European imagination is a "Self" constructed with "East" as the "Other." Similarly, De Sidda's cultural and philosophical closure of "Western presence metaphysics", although in his thinking movement devoted to deconstructing all binary opposites, seems to have not completely removed this remaining boundary of the Eastern capitalized other, and in deconstructing the opposition between "culture" and "nature", Dehida always retains a cultural relativist respect for the arche-opposition of the "West" and "East".

Of course, labeling Dehida "reverse racism" is a bit harsh. After all, Dehida was definitely different from Western philosophers like Hegel who openly despised "Oriental" and "non-phonetic writing" (cf. Hegel 1956 [1830–31]). At the same time, he is by no means simply "inverting" the racism of phonecentrism or romantically embracing "non-phonetic writing". Instead, he made it clear that there is no pure "phonetic writing" and no pure "non-phonetic writing." Any kind of writing involves non-phonetic spacing, interval, a diffé; rance). Speech is already a kind of writing, and time already contains space. More importantly, he pointed out that because Western anthropologists used the historical concept of "pinyin writing" as a model, and thus called the period before the emergence of pinyin script the "prehistoric" stage, the specific "historicity" of other languages was not squarely recognized and considered. However, we cannot ask De Sida himself to deal with these unique developments and histories of other language systems. As a Western philosopher, the subjective position of his thinking remains within the Western metaphysical tradition. Dehida herself is quite conscious of this. Therefore, he has repeatedly stressed that his deconstruction of the West can only be carried out from within the West. He can only deconstruct Logos within Logosianism, trying to open it and shake it within the boundaries of the present metaphysics of the West.

This involves strategic options for cultural resistance and the possibility of deconstruction. In general, the tactics of cultural resistance are nothing more than the universalist tactics of the Enlightenment and the relativist strategies of respecting differences. The deconstruction, on the other hand, often has to go beyond the opposition between these two strategies and try to touch the diagonal motion that makes this opposition possible. We can say that although De Sidda's deconstruction did not go beyond the boundaries of Western metaphysics, he did not think that he could or could get out of it. He deconstructs the legitimacy of the West from within, including the racist manipulations involved. But his philosophy of deconstruction, especially through the discussion of culture and "writing", then points to the deconstruction of "Western" vs. The Orient" is the historical urgency of this primary cultural opposition.

We found that Dehida placed particular emphasis on certain "names" as "Western personalities," or their belonging to Western cultural specificities. He asserted that there would be no "logocentrism" in either "Eastern" or "non-Western" (a residual category relative to "West"). Because, for him, the name Logos clearly says "West" on both the origin and the conceptual genealogy. As for phoné;　This word, he does not give equal cultural weight. De Sidda's "cultural relativization" of "nouns" is selective, of course, based on his personal perception of Western thought. Other nouns selected by Bird Screen include metaphysics, philosophy, literature, etc., all of which he believes are "Western" in meaning, carrying Western etymology and thought development, and like phoné; , history, thought, science and other terms are considered by him to be fairly neutral (see Derrida 2001: 10). Whether this choice is reasonable and whether it is limited to Dehida's own specific metaphysical views may be debatable--through the process of cultural translation, the Chinese translation of these terms, such as "metaphysics", "philosophy", "literature", "phonetics", "history", "thought", "science", etc., has also carried more or less many cultural meanings obtained in the process of translation. But that's another question.

An interesting point I would like to point out here is that for Dehida, using terms such as metaphysics, philosophy, and even literature to apply the terms "non-Western" to the mode and connotation of "non-Western" thought is a disrespect for his cultural specificity. An example of an exact relationship with language is the relationship between Western metaphysics and the verb to be. The etymology of the concept of "being", Being, comes from the universal archetypal verb to be in this European language, and from Aristotle's Metaphysics, the to be connecting subject and object is entangled in meaning with being as the concept of entity being. Dehida therefore asked:

Is there a "metaphysics" outside of the Indo-European language organization with the "to be" function? It does not imply that other languages may be deprived of extraordinary philosophical and metaphysical endeavors; rather, it allows us to avoid projecting our own particular forms of "history" and "culture" beyond the West. (Derrida 1982b [1971]: 199)

The Western metaphysical meaning of "To be" involves the relationship between "grammar" and "mode of thinking"—one of the central concerns of China's language reform discourse in the early twentieth century, and the import of European grammar is seen as an important way to transform the "Chinese way of thinking", especially through "grammatical translation" or, more specifically, "literal translation of European syntax". The syntax of modern Chinese has been "Europeanized" to a considerable extent, which is almost a consensus view. Perhaps the most important question of Dehidaian metaphysical questioning from the centuries-old practice of "non-Western" translation in China is not the degree of cultural specificity and universality of certain "nouns", "verbs" and other functional units of grammar. Rather, when "modernization" and "cosmopolitanization" (of "non-Western") are often equated to "Westernization" to some extent, how certain key "Western" terms, concepts, and grammatical functions can transform and change their meanings or acquire new meanings as cultural translations transcend boundaries. When logocentrism, the metaphysical core of Western thought, is translated into the name of "other languages" in countless cross-border cultural understandings and efforts, such as when logocentrism becomes the meaning of "logocentrism" in Chinese, does its meaning also change, detract, add, or transform?

Many important concepts of contemporary culture, including "modernity", "science", "globalization" and "cosmopolitanism", etc., are often inseparable from the general concept of "Western culture". These concepts, including the very concept of "Western culture," as a "translational effect," often become a symbolic field of meaning negotiation in the "non-Western" world, i.e., by the Marxist philosopher V.N. Volosinov. Volosinov (1973: 23) says that a symbol is a place where reality is refracted through struggle. This of course involves the question of cultural political power. This has also inspired some "non-Western" scholars to look for "Western" concepts in their own cultures, including logocentrism, the "equivalent." For example, the modern Chinese philosopher Mou Zongsan (1997) once claimed that Western metaphysics is based on the concept of to be, while Chinese "metaphysics" is based on the concept of "to beget". Such efforts often stem from the intention and need to "legitimize" China as well as "philosophical" or "metaphysical." This need itself has a rational basis in the cultural and political map. The problem is simply that such a need tends to take concepts such as "metaphysics" that carry the genealogy of Western culture for granted, culturally neutral, or universally justified.

If we say that the Chinese project of linguistic modernity in a sense made a logocentric turn for "Chinese culture"—because the general discourse of the Chinese reform does show a spiritual consistency with Western metaphysics, linking phonetic writing to rational thinking, while defining "other" writing as primitive, irrational, and must be dialectically transcended. But this is by no means to say that China's new culture activists or language reformers really just "take or can directly "take the logocentrism" of Western metaphysics. Lu Xun's "take-ism" in the context of the salvation map was actually advocating an active attitude that was neither humble nor arrogant, and compared with the passive "sendingism" and "sendingism", he emphasized that this active "taking" was through "possession, selection", "use, or storage, or destruction" (Lu Xun 1934b). This optimistic and positive take-it-takeism is actually very much in line with the concept of "cultural appropriation" emphasized in contemporary postcolonial theory, but it has not been elaborated on the discussion.

It should perhaps be said that through the practice of Chinese and Chinese modernity, the name logocentrism has acquired a broader horizon of signification, and its Western "origin" itself is no longer taken for granted, but has become an urgent question. Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, the attempt to find Western "equivalents" has become a specific cause in modern China, almost in another sense, reflecting the famous words of the late nineteenth-century British politician Benjamin Disraeli quoted by Said in his book Orientalism, "The East is a career" - from the "Western Origin Theory" of Zheng Guanying (1998 [1881]: 84-85) and others in the late Qing Dynasty. The efforts of Neo-Confucian philosophers such as Mou Zong in the early Min Dynasty to find the basis for China's "theory of existence" and the contemporary Chinese thinker Zhang Longxi (Zhang 1992) equated "Tao" with logos. However, these attempts to find equivalents, like Spipoak's labeling of Dehida as a "reverse racist," do little to clarify how logocentrism works in a particular historical context—especially with regard to how the closely related Western phonecentrism translates into a postcolonial intellectual violence, how does this violence operate in a particular discourse field, and how it is invoked and appropriated to construct non-Western projects of "modernity"?

The practice and discourse of translation in Chinese and Chinese modernity is an example of this operation. In the following discussion, I will explore the practice of "cultural translation" in Chinese and Chinese modernity. First, I will propose "translation" as a concept of "trans-creation." Secondly, I will discuss the translation practice and discourse in China in the early twentieth century, especially the dispute between literal translation and paraphrasing, and the discourse practice of Lu Xun and others advocating the use of "literal translation of Eurian syntax" to transform Chinese and the Chinese head. My purpose is not to determine which translation is "correct", but to reassess the discursive relationship between "literal translation of Urn syntax" and "Chinese mental transformation". I will then discuss the German philosopher Walter Benjamin's idea of "literal translation" in the context of Western theology: the literal translation of the syntax of the original work to expand the boundaries of established writing in order to reach the realm of "pure language". Through this theoretical reflection, I will point out that Chinese New Culture Movement activists often ignore the molecular movement involved in translation to deconstruct the Sino-Western dualism, and cling to such a holistic dualism, even though they have already practiced such a movement as translators. We will find that in the practice of literal syntactic translation, language is pushed to a certain fragmented grammatical realm [and highlights the artificiality of "grammar"], as the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze put it when talking about creative "writing", an "asyntactical", "agrammatical" limit.

"Translation" as a "transboundary – creation" and the "creative transformation" of language

Translation is not only a communication tool between different languages and cultures, nor is it just about the introduction of ideas. Translation, more essentially, is a process of creation and transformation, changing the horizons of a given language and culture. The Brazilian avant-garde poet Haroldo de Campos, who died in mid-August 2003, said that translation is a kind of transcreation, which is temporarily translated as "transformation", and he used "the transfusion of blood" as a metaphor for the profound impact of translation on established writing and culture (Vieira 1999). Contemporary Indian English-language writers often use the term transcreation to emphasize the symbiotic relationship between the original and the translated work (Bassnett and Trivedi 1999). A major difference between transcreation in the two contexts is that Gompos is talking about how to translate from a European language into Brazilian Portuguese, his native language, while an Indian writer is talking about how to translate Indian classics into English, the "language of the master," and the creation of Indian English. As far as the direction of translation is concerned, the examples of modern Chinese extensive translation of Western studies are more similar to the former, and in terms of the transformation of modern Chinese itself, it also has the meaning of "transformation" of the latter to a considerable extent. Many scholars have pointed out that numerous translations since the twentieth century have had a profound impact on the grammar and vocabulary of modern Chinese. Here, I would like to extend the concept of transcreation to explore the discourse of this effect. However, I will use a hyphenated trans-creation in order to emphasize the dual meaning involved - for a translation of a capital other (Western) and for the creation of the self (China); this is a creation that crosses the cultural boundary between China and the West, that is, a trans-cultural creation, a "trans-creation" that necessarily involves the negotiation and reconstruction of established boundaries. It is also a "creative-transformation" of a given culture.

As a "creative-transformative" practice, translation necessarily produces a molecular effect that interferes with grand projects such as "Westernization," "modernization," or "cosmopolitanization." The reason why these effects are "molecular" or "molecular" is that their operation submerges under the dualistic discourse of Juguan, and thus crosses the superficial boundary between so-called "Western culture" and "Chinese culture". The molecular meaning and intervention of "transcendentary" creation is often expressed through language, although not limited to the level of language. I here, I argue that this molecular translation discourse and practice is a specific form of "cultural translation." "Cultural translation" generally refers to a "cultural" translation, but it can also be said to be a translation of "culture". Both involve the negotiation of established "cultural" boundaries and boundaries, which includes not only the translation of words in the narrow sense, but also the translation of concepts, ideas, institutions and cultural consciousness. In the process of translation, in addition to the differences in political and social structure, the differences in structure and grammar between the Chinese writing system and the "pinyin writing of European variant grammar" have always been a central issue. Because this is the most specific and significant challenge that translators, as translators, writers, and creators, have to face. Especially in the early twentieth century, literati who were committed to creating a "new culture" and "new writing" in the face of the common statements that Chinese grammar were "inadequate" and "imprecise", the language reform aimed at "pinyin writing of European variant grammar", and the discourse field of the European word order of "subject-verb-object" as a universal grammar/logical model, and those who were committed to creating a "new culture" and "new writing" had to test their convictions in the process of actual translation. Nowhere best represents this atmosphere of discourse is the phonologist Qian Xuantong (1918: 352) who advocated the complete abolition of Chinese characters—"The meaning of Chinese characters is extremely ambiguous, the grammar is extremely imprecise, and it can only represent ancient naïve thought, and can never represent the new world civilization since Lamark, Darwin." This linguistic representation theory of language "representing" ideas ignores the creative space of language itself, that is, language is not only a tool or medium for "representing" ideas and reality, but also participates in the establishment of "thought" and "reality" and the construction of "thought as reality". However, a very paradoxical and enlightening fact is that despite the theory of language representation with a static view on the surface, the translation methodology and specific practice of Lu Xun and others to carry out Chinese ideological transformation with "grammar transformation" demonstrate the creativity of intervening in the way of thought and reality in language itself. In the discussion in the next section, I will elaborate further on this argument.

Thus, in that specific historical context, which is full of the consciousness of the death of the country, "the translation of grammar" has become a point of contention between different translation orientations—how to "translate" European grammar into Chinese grammar, or how to "translate" European grammar into Chinese grammar, in order to save Chinese's heart and brain.

In addition to the differences in grammatical construction, the basic unit of the Chinese writing system, "character", is fundamentally different from the words of pinyin script in structure. A Chinese "word" may contain multiple meanings and notes at the same time, and a Chinese "word" is a verb, noun or adjective often must be determined by its context and context, that is, the "word" of Chinese often does not have an exact fixed "part of speech" like words. Therefore, in the development of modern Chinese grammar, there has always been a debate that has not yet been reached on a consensus - whether the analysis of Chinese grammar should be based on "characters" or "words" (see Pan Wenguo 2002). The connotation and significance of this controversy is beyond the limits of this article and cannot be elaborated here. The point is that in the process of translation, the structural differences between "words" and words must also be highlighted, and this problem is inseparable from "grammar translation". For example, how to rewrite the order of words in European syntax into Chinese syntax, what are the feasibility and consequences of "word-to-word translation", and whether the translation of new nouns should be paraphrased or transliterated, all involve the structure of "words".

4. "Literal translation of Eur syntax" as a translation methodology for reform Chinese

When it comes to modern Chinese translation discourse, it is inevitable to mention Yan Fu's "faith, attainment, and elegance". In the "Translation Examples" of the Theory of Heavenly Speech, Yan Fu (1988 [1898]) called "Xindaya" a "trilemma in translation". Among them, "letter" and "reach" are often about the differences and tensions between the original European syntax and Chinese syntax. "Ya", on the other hand, is mainly about the choice of literary or vernacular language. Yan Fu, who is highly accomplished in classical texts, chose to translate the English philosopher Thomas Henry Huxley's Evolution and Ethics (i.e., The Evolution of Heavenly Evolution), John Stuart Mill's System of Logic (Mill's Famous Studies), and the sociologist Herbert Spencer's A Study of Sociology and eight other works. His translation can be said to be a typical interpretive translation, or "paraphrasing" as it is often called Chinese, that is, after first understanding the original text, dismantling the original European syntax and rewriting it into the customary short sentences in Chinese. The opposite of "paraphrasing" is "literal translation", which tries to retain the syntax and word sequence of the original text.

Basically, in the field of cultural translation in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the dispute between "literal translation" and "paraphrasing" was about different attitudes towards "grammar translation". Yan Fu said this in the "Translation Example" of the "Theory of Heavenly Speech":

The translation takes the deep meaning, so between the words and sentences, there are sometimes some benefits, not more than the words and sentences, and the meaning is not doubled by this article. The title is Da Wei. No cloud translation. ... The Western syntax, as few as two or three words, as many as tens of hundreds of words, if it is translated by imitation, it may not be understandable. And deleting the path is afraid that the meaning will be missed. In this translator, the whole text will be brilliant and integrated, and then the lyrics will be written and prepared for each other. To the original text is deep in theory and difficult to coexist, then the current and posterior are drawn to show its meaning. All this business is thought to be achieved. To achieve is to believe also. (Yan Fu 1988 [1898]: 1) (bold for my emphasis)

Here Yan Fu clearly points out the structural differences between Chinese and Owen in syntax. In Chinese , because there is no grammatical design of " connecting clauses " or " multi-clause sentences " , most sentences contain only one symbolic meaning , which is completely different from the multiple clauses used in European and American writing. Therefore, the "literal translation of Eur syntax" will cause a lot of controversy. Most of the New Culture Movement disagree with Yan Fu's approach of "inscription and translation", not to mention his style of writing in classical Chinese, although none of them deny Yan Fu's significant contribution to introducing the theory of evolution and the concept of natural selection.

Fu Sinian, the initiator of "Europeanized Literature," criticized Yan Fu's "Da Wei" as fundamentally "reforming" -- changing the true meaning of the original work. Based on the need to transform the Chinese, Fu Sinian advocated a literal translation of Eur syntax, and even preferably "word to word". The following is his thesis, which fully reveals the "language-thought-truth" three-in-one idea transformation view.

The author's thoughts must not be independent of the author's language. If we want to preserve the author's thoughts, we must preserve the author's grammar; if we change the tone, it must not be the author's thoughts. Therefore, a literal translation of a method is the only way to "preserve the truth". A literal translation word for word, or something that can't be done. Because Chinese and Western grammar is too separated, literal translation of sentence by sentence can be done. For the order of sentences is precisely the order of thought; human thoughts do not differ from country to country. It is best not to miss a word within one sentence. Because the translator is accountable to the author. In this way, even if it is not very complete, it can make fewer mistakes; even if it does not make the reader very happy, it can also make the reader not very confused. Speaking honestly, the literal translation does not hide anything, but the meaning is easy to expand casually and mix up the difficult places... The literal translation is true, and the paraphrase is false; the literal translation is the honest person, and the paraphrase is the false person. ... Someone said: "Western words and phrases are too far away from China, and they must be translated literally, and it is inevitable that there will be times when they cannot be understood." This is really rare and strange; we just need to preserve the original meaning. Moreover, translating books directly from Western sentences is of great use, that is, a way to help us make our own articles. We cannot do without literal translation, and we cannot avoid the situation of Europeanization of Chinese, so we must use the meaning of Western to make Chinese. Only in this way, so we cannot do without literal translation, let alone use the means obtained from literal translation as a means of writing for ourselves. (Fu Si 1940 [1919])

Fu Sinian clearly pointed out that the translation of European and American works is not only to introduce Western studies or Western trends, but also an effective way to construct a "new writing" in China. The most important thing is not the content of thought, but the way of thinking. In order to introduce the "advanced European way of thinking", it is necessary to use the method of "literal translation of European syntax" to transform the "Chinese syntax" and "Chinese way of thinking". Therefore, the best way to translate a sentence is to translate it verbatim. Fu Sinian even moralized the dispute between "literal translation" and "paraphrasing", giving "literal translation" a moral true status, while criticizing the practice of "paraphrasing" is hypocritical. Although this moralizing discourse is debatable, this set of translation methodologies that use literal Eur syntax to transform the established "way of thinking" is quite intriguing, fully revealing the specific intellectual violence that China faced at the beginning of the twentieth century and the fundamental determination it fostered - to completely transform the "Chinese mind", especially the Chinese "way of thinking".

In view of the significant syntactic differences between Chinese and Owen, "literal translation without missing a word" was indeed quite an impedient proposition, but it also quite described the common translation practice at that time. The most famous example is Lu Xun, the giant of vernacular literature. At that time, many criticisms of literal translation pointed at Lu Xun, because in addition to being a well-known prose and novelist, he was also a prolific translator and a practitioner of "literal translation of Eurian grammar". As I have emphasized, when examining this set of literal translations, it must not be considered solely from the point of view that the translation conveys the "meaning" of the original work, but must be linked to the translator's own understanding of the "language" - including "Chinese" and the so-called. Owen's fundamental views and evaluations, and the profound intention behind the national salvation: Don't forget that for Lu Xun, Fu Sinian, Qian Xuan and other new cultural theorists, Chinese was originally a set of backward "barbaric writing", which reflected China's backward civilization for thousands of years in both form and content, so there was a fierce slogan of "Chinese characters do not die, China will die" for a while.

It is more than Fu Sinian's literal translation, and Lu Xun argues that it is better to "hard translate" when necessary.

However, because the translator's ability is not enough, and the shortcomings of the Chinese text, after translation, it is obscure, and even there are many difficult points; If you remove the sentence, you lose your original tone. In my case, in addition to such a hard translation, there is only one way to tie my hands, and the only hope left is only that the reader is willing to bite the bullet. (Lu Xun 1930) (boldface for my emphasis)

For Lu Xun, the difficulty of translation highlights the "original shortcomings" of Chinese as a writing system, especially when it is used to translate more "progressive" and "accurate" written texts. The so-called "仂 sentence" is a long sentence with multiple clauses. Unlike Yan Fu's practice of dismantling the syntax of the original work into Chinese short sentences, Lu Xun chose to translate the syntax literally, and the result was often Chinese long sentences that were difficult to understand, just to retain the "original tone". Like Fu Sinian, Lu Xun believed that by retaining the hard translation of Erwen syntax, the Chinese writing language would eventually integrate Ern's syntax into itself over time, becoming Chinese "means of making one's own writing", although it is so difficult to read at present. Moreover, "difficult to understand" itself reflects the torment and pain process of mental transformation.

I still advocate "rather faith than obedience". Naturally, this so-called "unsmooth" does not mean that "kneeling" should be translated as "kneeling on knees", and "Tianhe" should be translated as "milk road". It is said that it is not like eating tea and rice that can be swallowed in a few bites, but you have to chew it with your teeth. Here's the question: why not completely sinicize and save the reader some effort? Such a translation not only enters new content, but also enters new expressions. Chinese language or language, the method is too imprecise.??? The imprecision of this grammar proves the imprecision of the idea, in other words, the head is a little confused. If you always use confused words, even if you read it, it will gush down, but in the final analysis, what you get is still a confused shadow. To cure this disease, I thought that I had to continue to suffer a little, and put it into a strange syntax, ancient, foreign provinces, foreign countries, and later it could be taken as such. This is not a utopian thing. For example, in Japan, the Europeanized grammar in their articles is very commonplace, very different from the time when Liang Qichao did the "Reading of Hewen Chinese"; the recent example, as mentioned in the letter, coined the word "strike" for the masses in 1925, although this word has never existed, but the public has already understood it. (Lu Xun 1932) (boldface for my emphasis)

Here, we can find that for Lu Xun, literal translation of Ern syntax is a "method" to improve or "heal" Chinese grammar, and even the Chinese head. As early as two or three years before Lu Xun wrote these words, in 1929, Liang Shiqiu (1929), another famous writer and translator in modern China, began to severely criticize Lu Xun's "hard translation", believing that it had reached the point of "dead translation". He described Lu Xun's translation as "like looking at a map, stretching out your finger to find the location of a syntactic clue." Lu Xun's "rather believe than obey" is in response to such criticism. And the reason why he opposed the translation of "shun" was not only because of the emphasis on "faith", but also because he believed that the "shun" reading that "gushed down" was often too smooth so that he did not seek much understanding, so that "what he got was still a confused shadow." For him, the translation and reading of "shun" is almost tantamount to the translation and reading of "confused". And "hard" translation and reading will force Chinese readers to think, to enter, and then assimilate the syntax and way of thinking of the original work. The "letter" followed by the hard translation is more faithful to the syntactic structure of the original work than to the ideological content of the original work, and all this can be reduced to a methodology for language/thought transformation - so as to promote the syntactic transformation and cognitive transformation of Chinese writers and readers. According to this methodology, the literal translation, or even the hard translation and the dead translation, by Lu Xun and others, really tried to draw a new mental map to facilitate the scientific and modernization of China's way of thinking. And this often boils down to a grand, holistic project of Sino-Chinese modernity—new syntax, new writing, new reading, new ways of thinking, new thinking, new culture, and even a new nation.

For Lu Xun and many radical New Culture Movement, this is an absolutely feasible plan. The favorite example of Lu Xun in Japan is the Europeanization of modern Japanese syntax.

Japanese is very "different" from Europe and the United States, but they gradually added new syntax, which is more suitable for translation than ancient Chinese without losing the original sharp tone, and at the beginning it was natural to "find the clue position of syntax", which gave some people not "pleasant", but after searching and getting used to, it has now been assimilated and become their own. Chinese grammar is even less complete than ancient Japanese scripts, but there have been some changes, such as "Shi" and "Han" are different from "Book of Books", and now the albino script is different from "Shi" and "Han"; There are additions, such as the Tang translation of Buddhist scriptures, the Yuan translation of the edict, of course, there are many "grammar syntactic lexicons" are made, once they are used, they do not need to extend their fingers, they can understand. Now there are "foreign languages," and many sentences, that is, must be reinvented, and if they are bad, they are hard-made. According to my experience, this translation can better preserve the original concise tone than turning it into a few sentences, but because it needs to be recreated, the original Chinese language has shortcomings. (Lu Xun 1930) (boldface for my emphasis)

Here we see that Lu Xun's emphasis is on how to preserve the "original sharp tone". Since for new culturalists such as Lu Xun, the structure of European language itself is relatively scientific, the so-called "original sharp tone" is not a characteristic of a specific author, but is attributed to the grammatical structure of the language itself. In other words, this "tone" is built into the syntactic construct of language—the grammatical order, which itself seems to ensure the logic of thinking. It is precisely on the basis of this concept of language that Qian Xuantong, as a Chinese phonologist , actively advocated the abolition of Chinese characters and the use of European languages, because, in his opinion, the meaning of Chinese characters was too vague and the grammar was imprecise, and it was simply not enough to "represent" the progressive ideas of the "new world" (Qian Xuantong 1918). According to this linguistic reproductionism, and the rigid view of almost "grammatical determinism", "translating" European languages with Chinese characters is even more reproducible in irreproducibility and translation in untranslatable. The Europeanization or Westernization of grammar is therefore an inevitable appeal and goal, that is, the second best way after recognizing the reality that it is impossible to abolish Chinese writing.

Thus, as we can see in the above quotation, Lu Xun gave the translator a difficult historical task Chinese- a trans-creative task of transforming the Chinese writing system as a whole. It is only in this context that their practice of literal translation of Eur syntax achieves a sense of argument.

The fallacy of grammatical determinism, paradoxically, underestimates the trans-creative space of (cultural) translation, even though it is itself based on a trans-creative endeavor. But it always clings to its grand structure and ignores the actual transboundary movement. It also ignores the characteristics of individual writers; obviously, not every text written by Owen has a "sharp tone." New Culture Activists tend to view problems from a grand and molar perspective, such as the "European precise mind" versus the "confused Chinese head." Thus it is impossible to grasp translation as a molecular movement of "transgression-creation". Their question has always been glued: How can a ridiculous language as confused and imprecise as Chinese "reproduce" or translate such an accurate and scientific Eurian text?

However, I would like to emphasize that this problem must not be reduced to the psychological "inferiority complex" or a psychoanalytical "desire for the master." Rather, because it is trapped in the binary structure of discourse, the transcendent-creative intention itself cannot recognize its own molecular dynamics.

Lu Xun's own "literal translation" of Owen and Japanese syntax indicates his eagerness to transform Chinese. Perhaps he would rather call him "an importer of European grammar" or Chinese"a "trans-creator of Chinese written language" rather than a mere translator. In fact, literal translation was a common cross-lingual practice in that particular historical era—including translation from Eurian or Japanese to Chinese, or re-Chinese translation of Eur-Japanese translation. Lu Xun can be said to represent the most radical and conscious hard translator among the literal translators.

By the 1930s, this overall program of language transformation through molecular translation was often linked to the communist framework. For example, Qu Qiubai, whom Lu Xun regarded as a "confidant," himself translated many works in Eurern, and he forced the translation language reform plan into a historical materialist evolutionary framework.

Translation – in addition to being able to introduce the original content to Chinese readers – also has a very important role: to help us create the new modern Chinese language. Chinese speech (writing) is so poor that even everyday items are anonymous. Chinese speech is hardly completely detached from the so-called "gesture language" – ordinary everyday conversation is almost inseparable from "gesture play". Naturally, everything expresses delicate distinctions and complex relationships of adjectives, verbs, prepositions, almost nothing. The remnants of the patriarchal feudal Middle Ages still tightly bind the living words of the Chinese, (not only the masses of workers and peasants!) In this case, creating new words is a very important task. The advanced countries of Europe have generally completed this task before two or three hundred years, four or five hundred years. ??? Translation can indeed help us to create many new words, new syntax, rich vocabulary and delicate precision and correct expression. Therefore, since we are engaged in the struggle to create a new language of modern China, we cannot fail to demand for translation: absolutely correct and absolute Chinese vernacular. This? Be? Want? Handful? New? Target? Wen? Change? Target? Speech? Language? Seashell? Continue? To give? Big? Numerous. (Qu Qiubai 1931) (emphasis added)

Qu Qiubai's dwarfing of the Chinese language system to the level of so-called "gesture language" is certainly very problematic. And the purpose of this dwarfing is nothing more than to put Chinese into the "remnants of the patriarchal feudal Middle Ages" in the stage theory of historical materialism. This kind of Chinese as a kind of stagnant monster that has not evolved for thousands of years, but gathers the negative cultural bearers who have sinned in Chinese civilization for thousands of years, continuing the criticism of Chinese characters by the new culture movement in the 1910s, but from the one-way evolution theory of pinyin characters, it has been replaced by the structure of communist historical stage theory, and what remains unchanged is the straight, one-way, and juguan theory of historical evolution.

For China's project of modernity, the creation and transformation of language is indeed an inseparable part. Unfortunately, when the question of language and writing is "raised" to the level of the so-called "culture" or "civilization", the meticulous operation of language transformation and transformation and its molecular movement across established cultural boundaries are often ignored or reduced to a dead end of binary discourse.

Before I elaborate further on the molecular movement of linguistic transformation, I must examine the paraphrase criticism of literal Written syntax. In addition to Liang Shiqiu's criticism of Lu Xun's hard translation as a "dead translation", another well-known literary scholar and translator, Lin Yutang (1940), also criticized the problems of "Europeanization of language style" and "literal translation". Lin Yutang distinguishes four kinds of translations from the degree of "faith"—"dead translation", "literal translation", "paraphrasing" and "Hu translation". It is worth noting that in the case of literal and paraphrased translation, the real problem is not the "degree" of "faith", but the definition of what "faith" itself is. For Lu Xun, the "letter" of translation lies in preserving the "original sharp tone", while for Lin Yutang, the "letter" of translation lies in whether it communicates the "meaning" in the original work.

The meaning in a sentence is a new "gesamtvorstellung" (total meaning) that is coherently combined with each other, and this total meaning must be derived from the use of words and the connection of words. It adopts an attitude towards the translation, first understanding the meaning of the entire sentence of the original text, and then re-expressing it according to the grammatical habits of this Chinese according to the general meaning. ... The text must be written according to the psychology of Chinese ... If the translator does not first translate the meaning of this original text into meaningful Chinese, then the literal translation according to the word is like Chinese but not Chinese, and it seems to be understandable, and it will never achieve a smooth result. When we read this translation, we feel that its grammar may not be flawed, but Chinese speaking is by no means the same. A language has the language nature of a language, grammatical syntax, must be rooted in a certain habit, usually the so-called "through" or "not understood", that is, whether its syntax is rooted in custom. ... If the translation is too close to the Western mentality, the reader will also think that it is "non-Chinese", and this kind of non-Chinese Chinese does not need to be disguised in the name of "Europeanization", because it is different from the problem of Europeanization. Whatever the style, it is incomprehensible until it is "nationalized", and it cannot be used as an exception for translation. And most of the work of Europeanization lies in vocabulary, if grammar is extremely difficult to Europeanize, and cannot be Europeanized in every sentence. (Lin Yutang 1940) (boldface for my emphasis)

In the above quotation, Lin Yutang repeatedly emphasizes the difference between "Chinese psychology" and "Western psychology", which shows that he holds a cultural relativist view of language. In contrast to "Europeanization", he advocated that translation must go through a process of "nationalization". Lin Yutang believes that the "letter" of translation lies in the communication of meaning, so he advocates the unit of analysis of sentences containing complete meaning, and he uses a German word, "total meaning" (gesamtvorstellung), which is a term in experimental psychology, which refers to a whole concept that we can immediately obtain when we read or hear a sentence without having to think word by word. He believed that the translator could express it in a "Chinese way of speaking" after a "clear and accurate understanding" of the meaning of the original work. This is actually quite close to Yan Fu's "Da Wei", except that for Lin Yutang, Yan Fu's "translation of Huxley's nineteenth-century text into the small shadow of Liu Zihou's feudal theory" (Lin quoted Zhang Junjiao) has already moved from "paraphrasing" to "Hu translation". In other words, the "nationalization" of Yan Fu's translation is too much. But they all equally advocate the unit of analysis of sentences containing the overall "meaning." The primary reason why Lin Yutang defended Chinese's established syntax and "writing psychology" was, of course, because he did not consider Chinese a backward or radically reinvented language. For him, like other languages of the world, Chinese is a legitimate, legitimate, conventional, written medium. And this premise, for Lu Xun and others, no longer exists. For them, the "rationality" of the Chinese is problematic in itself. Therefore, in this debate about "paraphrasing" and "literal translation", there is a lack of intersection of definitions. The real problem still boils down to the overall evaluation of "Chinese" as a writing system, not which translation method is ideal, or which translation better grasps the essence of the original work.

It is precisely because of the different views on what "faith" is, and the different interpretations of whether the basic unit of translation should be a word or a sentence, so there is a dispute between "sentence translation" and "word translation". Rather than saying that Lu Xun and Fu Sinian focus on the individual "meanings" of words and ignore that sentences are the units containing complete meaning, they believe that "meaning" is tied to the order in which words are arranged in sentences. For them, the sincerity of the translation depends on whether or not these sequences are preserved, that is, the "syntactic logic" of the original work, so they advocate the words that make up the syntactic sequence as the unit of analysis. For them, sentences are not just sentences, but the order of thinking methods and logic, which is the "sharp tone" that is lacking in Chinese and Chinese texts and heads. "Literal translation of European syntax" is actually the order of literal translation words and the logic of thinking, to borrow the words of Lin Yutang, it is a literal translation of "Western psychology" to transform "Chinese psychology". On the contrary, Lin Yutang strongly advocated that the translation must undergo a certain degree of "nationalization", that is, follow the so-called "Chinese mentality", in order to appropriately express the meaning of the original work in a fluent language, otherwise it is not a "meaningful Chinese language", but only a "non-Chinese Chinese language". Lin Yutang does not deny that in the process of translation, Chinese will inevitably be "Europeanized", but he advocates that Europeanization should be limited to vocabulary and not "grammar".

However, what is "meaningful Chinese", what is "verbal nature", what is "Chinese psychology"? If "meaningful Chinese language" is based on conventional "speaking style", "language nature" and grammar, are these not changing? Grammar has also been "Europeanized" to a considerable extent, and the "language" and "psychology" of Chinese have indeed undergone major changes in the past hundred years.

From the above discussion, we can see how the overall evaluation of Chinese as a writing system affects the translation practice of radical new culture activists such as Lu Xun. Lu Xun couldn't help but stretch out his finger to find the "heavenly book-like" translation of the syntactic map, which can be said to fully embody the methodological example of literal translation of Eur syntax to transform Chinese. His translation discourse always returns to a conceptual conception of modernity or a project of Westernization at critical moments, thus obscuring the molecular movement of actual translation operations. Perhaps, this is the real reason why Lu Xun's hard translation will become a "dead translation".

The so-called literal translation does not mean that there is no need to cross, transform, interpret and create. Conversely, the work of literal translation requires more meticulous transgression-creativity, because operating between highly structurally heterogeneous language systems means that the practice of literal translation of heterogeneous syntax necessarily extends the established boundaries of the target language. Or, in the words of the French philosopher Deleuze, pushing language to a non-syntactic, non-grammatical limit, forcing it to communicate with its own "outside". That is to say, it is in the process of pursuing "grammar" that Chinese pushed into a "non-grammar" context. But at the same time, it entered what the German philosopher Benjamin called "a more definitive linguistic realm."

V. Benjamin's literal translation of syntactic linguistic views and the molecular movement of translation

In the 1920s, New Culture Activists advocated the abolition of Chinese characters in publications such as New Youth and the use of "Esperanto", based on a kind of linguistic universalism. This universalist discourse is often consciously integrated into a "cosmopolitan" cultural-political stance. In postcolonial contexts, the dream of linguistic cosmopolitanism often has to go through the painful process of first approving its own language worthless. However, as a methodology for transforming a given language, "literal translation of heterogeneous grammar" does not necessarily presuppose the inferior status of the target language like Lu Xun and others, but is also likely to be a linguistic universalism based on another meaning, or a theological teleology based on a common future. For example, the seventeenth-century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz's ideal of a "universal script," if realized, would represent a return from the chaotic and misunderstood multilingual state to the common language era before God's destruction of the Tower of Babel in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The early twentieth century German cultural theorist and translator Benjamin, out of the same theological-metaphysical context, especially Judaism, saw translation as a seed that gave birth to a "pure language."

In On Language as Such and on the Language of Man (1979: 314-332), Benjamin imagines that the language before Adam and Eve fell to earth—the Word of God in the Garden of Eden, single, pure, and infinite. The exodus of human beings from the Garden of Eden was accompanied by the beginning of their "language-mind" sinking: the loss of pure nomenclature, the rampant concept of instrumental language, just as the linguists of Bourgeois believed that language was "nothing more than symbols", ignoring the intentionality of language, and the proliferation of overnaming caused the tragedy of human relations. Human language, having lost the pure nomenclature of God's Language, is doomed to be incomplete and finite.

In contrast to the absolute unrestricted and creative nature of the divine word, the infinity of all human language is limited and essentially analytical. （Benjamin， 1979： 323）

This theological concept of infinity seems doomed after the loss of the original language to no return, unless we can combine the finite "intentionality" of all human languages, or reproduce an infinite whole. And translation, with its shuttling between different linguistic intentional fields, is likely to be a process towards this whole.

In The Task of the Translator, Benjamin (1986) made the idea that literal translation of heterogeneous syntax is the path to the ideal of a transparent language. The so-called transparent language is a pure language that is intentional and pure, without excessive naming and without misunderstanding. In other words, in order to achieve the ideal of "transparent language", it is necessary to radically leapfrog and create the syntax of the established language. Like Lu Xun and other Chinese New Culture Activists, Benjamin advocated literal translation of different grammars, but based on different goals and presuppositions. The purpose of Benjamin is not to transform any particular language, but to refine [or refine] "language as such" through the practice of translation.

From the operational level of translation practice, we will find that Benjamin's concept of literal translation clearly points to the molecular language movement to which translators must participate, which is exactly what the Chinese New Culture Movement ignores. The reason for this difference may not be the difference between wisdom and foolishness, but because of the different perceptions of what is "ideal language": Benjamin's ideal is a pure language that transcends any specific human language, and the ideal of Lu Xun and others is a language model of the European Pinyin variant grammar that they believe represents the carrier of modern scientific rational thinking.

Benjamin argues that, like Lu Xun and others, the basic unit of analysis of translation should be "words" rather than "sentences". He believes that only through a literal translation of the syntax of the original can the translation be refined into the "light" of the original.

For the fragments of a vase to be restored, they must match each other in the smallest detail, although they do not always need to be identical. Similarly, a translation does not have to strive to be close to the meaning of the original work, but must carefully incorporate the original's mode of signification in detail so that both the original and the translation can be identified as a recognizable as fragments of a larger language, like fragments of a vase. For this reason, the translation must be restrained, do not want to communicate, do not try to render the sense, and in the process, the importance of the original work is only that it has been conveyed, so the translator does not have to bother to piece together and express something??? The implication of the reliability ensured by literalness is that the translation reflects the great longing for linguistic complementation. True translation is transparent, without obscuring the original work, without obscuring the light of the original work, but allowing pure language, through the strengthening of its own medium, to shine more fully on the original work. And all this can be achieved through the literal rendering of the syntax, which proves that the translator's primary unit is the word, not the sentence. Because, if a sentence is a wall in front of the original language, literalness is a cloister. (Benjamin 1986: 78-79) (emphasis in italics)

This is one of the few passages in which Benjamin speaks directly to the syntax of the original work. Although it is still not clear why a "true translation" must be "transparent" and can be achieved through a literal translation of syntax, except that in such a literal translation, the syntax of the original work will still be clearly visible. The question is, is this "visibility" of the syntax of the original work necessarily equivalent to the "transparency" of the language itself, whether "meaning" can also be "transparent", what is the relationship between the transparency of "syntax" and the transparency of "meaning"? Such questions, which must return to the aforementioned Western theological-metaphysical tradition, are certainly not answered in one go, but provide us with a direction to explore the linguistic creativity of "literal translation."

In the discussion of the Benjamin view of translation, the literal translation of syntax is perhaps the most taken for granted and the least discussed. For example, Desida interprets Banjamin's emphasis on literalness primarily in terms of "the privilege of naming" without addressing syntax (Derrida 1985: 188). This is probably because, as I have pointed out in my discussion in the second section of this article, De Sida did not really think outside the boundaries of Indo-European languages when he looked at interlingual practice.

I personally believe that in order to clarify this aspect, we must first explore what is meant by "language itself" or "pure language", and the dynamic implications of these concepts for what is the "meaning" of the original work.

For Benjamin, the translated "letter" does not convey meaning. Conversely, he considers translations that attempt to communicate meaning to be "bad" translations. Benjamin's translator should be concerned not with the meaning of the original work, but with "the language itself." Such a "language itself", on the one hand, as mentioned above, can be said to be the common voice of all mankind before the collapse of the Tower of Babel in the biblical legend, and on the other hand, it can also be said to be a future language belonging to the whole world that has not yet taken shape. In any case, starting from the idealism of linguistic universalism, Benjamin argues that the translator's "task" is to elevate the original work to "a higher and purer linguistic air" through a literal translation of syntax, and to implant the original work into a "more definitive linguistic realm." True translation reflects "the great thirst for complementarity of languages".

According to this concept of translation, the peculiar nature of the translation and the ingenuity of its syntactic visibility highlight a process towards a higher level of language than those translated that convey meaning smoothly. That is, it belongs to a language that is still emerging. However, I would like to emphasize that what Benjamin is pursuing is not a metalanguage or metalanguage, nor is it what language psychologists call "Mentalese, an human internal language." The pure language he speaks of is both a lost original language and a future language that is still taking shape, and in this sense it can be said to be an origin yet to come. Such a language, Benjamin prophesied, would encompass the "intentions" of all given languages.

Although all the individual elements of different languages - words, sentences, structures - are completely different, they are intended to complement each other. (Benjamin 1986: 74) (boldface for my emphasis)

Such intentions to "complement" or "complement" are, of course, based on the ideal of a "universal language/script". According to this ideal, every language is incomplete and unfinished and must be completed in the process of mutual translation. More importantly, the "meaning" of each language is also incomplete and still taking shape.

In individual, unsupplemented languages, meaning never lies in the relative independence of individual words or sentences; Rather, meaning is in constant state of flux—until it can produce a pure language in harmony with all modes of intention. (Benjamin 1986: 74) (boldface for my emphasis)

Therefore, as a cross-lingual practice, the process of translation is also the evolutionary process of transgression and creation of language itself. Since the meaning is still evolving, the criterion of the "faith" of the translation does not lie in conveying the meaning of the original work. Translation is such a process, the evolution of meaning, accompanied by the formation of pure language.

Notably, the Chinese New Culture Movement focused their critical firepower on the Chinese as a target language for translation, or as Lu Xun put it, "the shortcomings of Chinese texts." Conversely, Benjamin does not argue that any particular language is superior or inferior. However, similar to Lu Xun's argument, Benjamin also emphasizes that the boundaries of the established language will be expanded by incorporating the "mode of meaning" and different grammar incorporated into the original work. Foreignness is also a form of becoming-ness. Luther translated the Hebrew Bible into German, Hö Dringlin; Lderlin's translation of Greek tragedy into German is a concrete example of extending the boundaries of German syntax through literal translation. Citing the German translation theorist Rudolf Pannwitz's ideas of "foreignizing" and "domesticating," Benjamin echoes the literal translation views of Chinese New Culture activists in another way.

Our translations, even the best, come from the wrong premises. They wanted to turn Hindi, Greek, and English into German, not German into Hindi, Greek, and English. ... The translator's basic mistake is that he wants to preserve the accidental formation of his own language, without allowing his language to receive the powerful influence of foreign Chinese. (Benjamin 1986: 80-81) (bold for my emphasis)

This argument is very close to Lu Xun and Fu Sinian's view of literal translation and their criticism of the paraphrasing, but there is a difference that the latter intensifies, politicizes, and even moralizes the opposition between "alienation" and "naturalization" in a postcolonial cultural context - for example, Fu Sinian's "literal translation is true, paraphrased is false; literal translation is honest people, paraphrased is false people." This is because, in the context of China's post-colonial intellectual domain in the early twentieth century, the question of language has been infinitely elevated to the fundamental question of national survival. More importantly, such intensification often leads to a holistic dualism in discourse – the "Chinese mind" vs. the European mind" - thus masking the molecular character of the translation effect.

Conversely, Benjamin's emphasis on "literalness," with "word" rather than "sentence" as the basic unit of literal syntax, highlights the detailed operation of an unformed "larger language," like a "fragment of a vase", transcending the boundaries and definitions of a given language, and thus pointing to the molecular movement of translation.

Although Lu Xun and Fu Sinian also advocated the method of "word for word" to directly translate Eurian syntax, their ultimate goal was still to transplant a full-term so-called "Ern syntax" or "European grammar" into the structure of Chinese Chinese script, as if there really was a formed and complete thing, called "European grammar", Chinese could directly take it. Although Lu Xun's famous "take-it-ism" emphasizes the process of cultural appropriation of "possession and selection", it still ignores the interactive dynamics in the process of appropriation, that is, the continuous molecular leapfrog and creative movement between language, including the original work and the translated language.

6. Conclusion: The shift of subjective position, the non-syntactic limits of language, and the future of transcendence

Looking back at China's cultural project of "modernity," the rhetorical opposition between a particular "Western" and "Chinese" image has always been a strategy of discourse throughout different historical stages, which quite validates what the postcolonial theorist Spipoak calls a kind of "strategic essentialism" with a distinct political purpose. In fact, Westernism and Orientalism are not uncommon in academia as a style of thought that essentially digitizes Western and Eastern imagery, as noted by many scholars such as Edward Said (1978) and James G. Carrier ed. (1995). In Western academia, in addition to a typical Orientalist thinking, which constructs the East as the "Other" of the West, there is also often a Westernist thinking that constructs the West as a "standard" culture, especially in anthropology, which has flourished with colonialism since the early nineteenth century, which is a theoretical construction close to the Weberian ideal to facilitate the so-called "cross-cultural studies". Max Weber's (1986) comparative study of "world religions" and Hegel's (1956) Western-centric discourse on "world history" are well-known examples. Similarly, it is not difficult to find examples of Orientalist discourse in the politics and scholarship of the Eastern world, and it is often detached into a discourse that emphasizes the identity of Eastern culture, or "authenticity", a cultural incommensurability. Perhaps what is important is not the essentialization of difference, but the specific use and historical context of these discourse images, that is, their historical specificity. Anthropologist Jonathan? Jonathan Spencer (1995: 235, 250) points out that the use of Westernism in the East, unlike its use in Western academia, tends to have a very different political context. The questioning of historicism or anti-essentialism for these political uses may itself be a political "incorrectness" and not exhaustive in theoretical observation. It is true that the tendency to essentialize has dangerous political consequences, because it often reinforces the distinctions and differences between gender, race, nationality, social class, and even "West" and "East." However, as a strategy of resistance, especially in the culturally politically disadvantaged non-Western world, the use of Westernism and Orientalism often involves a complex process of subject-position shifting, a cultural self-reflection, diagnosis, and reform intention. In the postcolonial context often faced by the non-Western world, this subjective shift is not actually free and arbitrary, but a coercive, cultural-political condition, which is the reflection movement that non-Western intellectuals have to engage in when subjected to the "intellectual violence" (Spivak, 1996: 128-129) carried by the powerful political, economic, and military forces of the West.

As I have pointed out in this article, the Westernist ideology of Chinese reform (e.g., glorifying all Ern-language texts with a "refined tone") and Orientalist biases (e.g., reducing the "essence" of Chinese to backward and barbaric writing that is "unscientific" and "imprecise"), while causing a decline in cultural self-confidence, has also forced Chinese intellectuals to rebuild the new territory of Chinese writing and culture in the context of actual cultural translation. Their use of "Chinese" to carry out such transformation itself overturns their paradox that "Chinese cannot essentially represent progressive thought," and also points out that the creation and transformation of "molecularization" beyond the boundaries – rather than the overall cultural discourse of the Chinese and Western duality – is a positive way to "build" the modernity of China's special language. In other words, it is this "molecular" cultural creation that enables the shifting of subjective positions that constantly shuttles between "Westernism" and "Orientalism" cultural strategies.

When it comes to the strategy of cultural discourse, we certainly cannot ignore the imbalance between Westernism and Orientalism. The operation of Westernism can easily slide into the orbit of universalism and become a rationalist "enlightenment" discourse that obliterates differences, while the operation of Orientalism can easily fall into the quagmire of relativism and become a posture of resistance that clings to tradition or emphasizes the "irreducibility" of cultural characteristics. The ultimate reason behind this is, of course, based on power. However, Westernism is not necessarily the right of "Westerners", but can also be used as a reform strategy for "Easterners" as a benchmark for self-transformation. This is a rather significant fact in the discourse on Westernization in China. Similarly, Orientalism is not necessarily a fantasy of the "Westerners" about the other, but it may also be a weapon for the "Orientals" to whip themselves. This is fully demonstrated by the iconoclastic discourse of the New Culture Movement. An examination of China's Westernization discourse in the last century reveals that Chinese intellectuals have always shuttled back and forth between the dominant positions of these two discourse strategies. Related debates, such as the "Total Westernization and China-Identity Controversy" in 1935 and the later "Popular Language Movement", tend to cling to the binary opposition (molar dualisms) of existing cultures as a whole in terms of structure and "conclusion", whether Eastern culture vs. Western culture, national essence vs. Westernization, culture vs. technology, pinyin vs. pictography, and even vernacular vs. literary opposition. This cultural duality can be said to be an important theme of cultural polemics between China and the West for a hundred years, and such polemics took place in the twenties, thirties, sixties, and eighties respectively (and the interruption in the thirties, forties, and fifties was mainly due to war and repressive political rule). Looking back at these polemics, we can see that Chinese and Taiwanese intellectuals have been trying to break away from the Sino-Western binary way of thinking, but have often been pulled back again and again (in the conclusion of the debates). For example, in the 1935 "Sino-based cultural controversy," Chen Xujing's "total Westernization" was opposed to Professor Shi's "Chinese-based cultural construction," and in the end, Hu Shi suggested replacing the word "Westernization" with "cosmopolitanization," but was immediately branded as an "eclectic" by the Westernizers. This again shows the problem consciousness of the dichotomy between China and the West. In fact, like cross-cultural translation practices, the concept of "cosmopolitanism" itself has pointed to the molecular deconstruction and reorganization of this binary opposition. However, because intellectuals involved in the discourse can easily fall into binary thinking, neglect the detailed operation of specific discourse, and ignore the ever-expanding space of cultural translation, "cosmopolitanization" is still equated with "Westernization", and many polemics and language creation movements once again move towards a binary and opposing discourse dead end.

While "Westernization" and "evolution" are often confused, Chinese neoculturalists and language reformers generally believe in untested hypotheses such as "the phonetic script of European variant grammar is 'relatively scientific'", "Chinese is outdated 'hieroglyphs'", and "Chinese's grammar is 'incomplete' and 'inaccurate'". These hypotheses can be divided into two aspects, one is the Hegelian "alphabetic prejudice", based on the erroneous theory of linguistic linear evolution and phonocentrism, while ignoring the special binary evolutionary system that Chinese both sound and image. The second is the "grammatical fallacies" of the European language center, which clings to the "subject (subject)-verb-object (object)" sequence unique to Western metaphysics, while ignoring Chinese unique way of sentence formation. In fact, modern Chinese grammar scholars still cannot find a consensus classification of words, pointing out that "universal grammar" is not an easy line of discussion. What can really point out a clear path may not be any principled exposition strategy, but the specific content and operation mode of discourse. The specific discourse practice of what I call "linguistic modernity" in China also includes various "cosmopolitanisms", such as Chen Duxiu's "cosmopolitanism through individualism", Liang Qichao's "cosmopolitanism through nationalism", and Hu Shi's "cosmopolitanism through Westernization (or Westernism)", and more importantly, the creation and transformation of "modern Chinese" (as opposed to "ancient text" or "classical Chinese") itself.

I have always emphasized that these practices often involve a kind of molecular trans-creation - that is, the disassembly and reconstruction of the most detailed elements of culture, thus penetrating and transcending the established boundaries of the culture as a whole. The only way to glimpse this molecular creative process and movement that sneaks into and transcends binary opposition is through the analysis of specific discourses. Therefore, by examining the theoretical and practical significance of the translation by Lu Xun and others, the attempt made in this paper can be said to be a central part of a larger plan, because I believe that the transformation of Chinese ("modernization"/"Westernization") plays a key role in the conscious cultural construction of China's modernization as a whole. As text analysis reveals, the contradiction between molecular discourse practice and holistic binary opposition is most embodied in the narrow sense of "translation" practice and discourse. By examining and reevaluating the controversy between literal translation and paraphrasing in the 1930s, especially Lu Xun et al.'s exposition and practice that "literal translation of foreign grammar helps to transform Chinese (and the confused head of Chinese)", I point out that it is precisely because of the tenacious structure of the binary opposition between China and the West that Lu Xun and others have not fully grasped the molecular movement of language transformation in their discourse, although they have actually practiced such a movement.

The French philosopher Deleuze's view of writing may help to understand the creativity of this translation practice.

The Problem of Writing: As Proust put it, writers invent a new language in language, a foreign language. They show us the power of grammar or syntax. They push language beyond the ordinary cultivation track, and they make it delirious [dé; lirer]）。 But the problem of writing must also be related to [b] the problem of seeing and hearing: in fact, when another language is created in a language, the whole language moves towards an "asyntactical," "agrammatical" limit and begins to communicate with its own external world. （Deleuze 1997. [1993]: lv) (bold for my emphasis) [/b]

This passage about literary creation is unexpectedly applicable to the creative task of transgression faced by China's New Culture Movement. In such historical contexts, through the collective attempt at cultural transformation, the variability and plasticity of language are highlighted. In fact, language is originally a field with a lot of flexibility, whether in terms of the composition of words or the grammar of sentences. This elasticity, of course, manifests itself first and foremost in literature, especially experimental writing in various genres, poems, novels, or essays, which may have "invented new languages within languages." The flexibility of language is also reflected in the practice of translation, especially through the literal translation of different syntax, to squeeze the established language boundaries, just like Lu Xun's "unsolvable long sentence" translated into Ouwen - although the syntactic structure of the original Ern sentence is still faintly visible, the meaning of the sentence is confused. In this kind of translation, both the language and its readers may inevitably fall into the situation of "delirium".

And when the elasticity of language is stretched to the extreme, that is, the artificial character of language syntax, and the gorgeous cloak of so-called conventions or "cultural specificity" is unreservedly revealed.

Under the banner of "Europeanization" of style and "Westernization" of culture, there are indeed countless molecular creations of "grammatical equivalents" and semantic transitions. Many scholars have pointed out that syntax, style, and the "Europeanization" of literary theory are important resources for modern vernacular literary creation, especially the writing of new poems (see Zhang Taozhou 2002). However, the concept of "Europeanization" is likely to require further clarification and discussion, especially the holistic implications. I would like to emphasize that in the process of so-called "Europeanization" of culture and writing, the European source itself must have undergone a process of transformation and creation, in order to incorporate the meaning model of the target culture, just as the Chinese target must also undergo a certain transformation and creation in order to be incorporated into the European source. In other words, the efforts of "Europeanization" inevitably cross the cultural boundary between Europe and China - not only in a grand way, without compromising the crossing of the original line, but also in the process of molecular undercurrent, redrawing the boundary. When we say that "modern Chinese has been Europeanized," we make a sweeping statement without mentioning any specific operations and dynamics in its transformation. Bilingual readers may understand this transformation process, monolingual readers may find it baffling. How to make sense out of nonsense is the key problem of literal translation of heterosyntax, and it is also the problem that we must look at with caution in the face of "modernity", a symbolic struggle full of meaning negotiation.

*This article was originally published in Soochow Journal of Sociology, December 2005, No. 19, pp. 57-100.

bibliography

Shen Xiaolong, 1985, Humanistic Spirit, or Scientism? – Mid-20th Century Chinese Speculative Writings". Shanghai: Xuelin Press.

Mou Zongsan, 1997, "Four Causes Say" Speech. Taipei: Goose Lake Press.

Wu Jingheng, 1918, "What is the Cure for Chinese Characters", New Youth, Vol. 5, No. 5.

Lin Yutang, 1940, "On Translation", edited by Huang Jiade in Translation Essays. Republic of China Series Part III, 50. Shanghai Bookstore.

Tang Lan, 2001 [1949], Chinese Philology. Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House.

Xu Tongming, 1994, ""Characters" and the Methodology of Chinese Studies: A Commentary on the "Indo-European Perspective" in Chinese Studies", World Chinese Teaching. 1994（3）， pp. 0-14.。

Liang Shiqiu, 1929, "On Mr. Lu Xun's "Hard Translation"", New Moon, Vol. 2, Nos. 6 and No. 7, September 1929).

Liang Shiqiu, 1930, "The so-called "literary and art policymakers"", included in the "Liang Shiqiu Anthology".

http：//www.millionbook.net/mj/l/liangshiqiu/lsq/11.htm.

Zhang Taozhou, 2002, "The Poetic Space of Modern Chinese: On the Language of New Chinese Poetry in the 20th Century", Chinese Social Sciences. Beijing: Chinese Journal of Social Sciences.

Fu Sinian, 1940 [1919] "Testimonials on Translation", edited by Huang Jiade in Translation Essays. Republic of China Series Part III, 50. Shanghai Bookstore. Originally published in New Wave, Volume 1, No. 3.

Pan Wenguo, 2002, Character Standards and Chinese Studies. East China Normal University Press.

Zheng Guanying, 1998 [1881], Western Studies, in Unfinished Revolution: A Hundred Years of Peng, edited by Long Yingtai and Zhu Weizheng. Taipei: Business Press.

Lu Xun, 1934a, "Joke Just Treat It as a Joke" (Part I), Declaration, July 25, 1934.

Lu Xun, 1934b, "Takeism", China Daily? Trends" June 7, 1934.

Lu Xun, 1932, "On Translation: Answer J. K. On Translation," Literary Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 1, June 1932.

Lu Xun, 1930, "Hard Translation" and "The Class Nature of Literature", Mengya Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 3.

Qian Xuantong, 1918, "Correspondence: The Future Question of Writing in China," New Youth, Vol. IV, No. 4.

Qu Qiubai, 1931, "On Translation", Cross Street, Nos. 1 and 2.

Yan Fu, 1988 (1898), "Translation Examples", "The Theory of Heavenly Evolution". Taipei: Business Press.

Derrida, Jacques, translated by Zhang Ning, 2001, Interview Generation, L'écriture et la différence (Writing and Difference). Beijing: Life, Reading, New Knowledge Sanlian Bookstore.

Barlow, Tanie, 1997, “Introduction” for Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia ed. by Tanie Barlow. Duke University Press.

Bassnett, Susan and Harish Trivedi, 1999, “Introduction: Of colonies, cannibals and vernaculars” to Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Routledge.

Benjamin, Walter, 1986, “The Task of the Translator” in Illumination, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Schocken Books.

Benjamin, Walter, 1978, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” in Reflections, edited by Peter Demetz, translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.

Deleuze, Gilles, 1997 [1993], “Preface to the Drench Edition” for Essays: Critical and Clinical. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Derrida, Jacques, 1980, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”, in Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass. University of Chicago Press.

Derrida, Jacques, 1974, Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. The John Hopkins University Press.

Derrida, Jacques, 1973, Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Translated by David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Derrida, Jacques, 1982a, “Différance” in Margins of Philosophy. Tr. by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press.

Derrida, Jacques, 1982b [1971], “The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics” in 1982. Margins of Philosophy translated by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press.

Derrida, Jacques, 1982c, “Tympan” in Margins of Philosophy. Tr. by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press.

Derrida, Jacques, 1985, “Des Tours de Babel” in Difference in Translation. Cornell University Press.

Foucault, Michel, 1970, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, Michel.

Foucault, Michel, 1972, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse of Language. New York: Pantheon Books.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, 1956 [1830-31], The Philosophy of History. Tr. J. Sibree. New York: Dover Publication, INC.

Lin Yu-Sheng, 1979, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Liu, James J. Y, 1988, Language-Paradox-Poetics: A Chinese Perspective. Edited by Richard John Lynn. Princeton University Press.

Rorty, Richard, 1984, “Deconstruction and Circumvention”, Critical Inquiry 11 (1984): 1-23

Text/Zhang Junmei