从《时代周刊》对中国事务的报道看“文化翻译”中的“社会整体想象”

A Social Holistic Imagination in Cultural Translation:Viewed from China Report in Time Magazine

对西方媒体关于中国事务的报道,历来研究多从归化和异化角度进行分析,局限于表面。本文借用民族志中的"文化翻译"概念对《时代周刊》上近些年关于中国的报道进行了分析,指出"文化翻译"因其对他者文化行为的建构和向西方读者传递的貌似合理的"社会整体想象"而受到批判。西方的异域新闻报道也存在类似的"文化翻译"过程。《时代周刊》上的"文化翻译"借助一套成熟的修辞和写作策略,建构和控制着对中国文化的整体想象,依旧没有摆脱欧洲中心主义观。

Previous studies on the report about China in Western media were undertaken in the light of domestication and foreignization. This article, by using the problematized concept of ＂cultural translation＂ in ethnography in the analysis of China-related reports in Time in recent years, points out that ＂cultural translation＂ has long been criticized for its cultural construction of the ＂Other＂ and its ostensibly reasonable ＂social holistic imagination＂. The Western news report about a foreign land shares a similar process of ＂cultural translation＂. Time magazine in parti- cular, when reporting China, tends to construct and control the holistic image of Chinese culture by employing a set of mature, built-in rhetoric of writing, thus heavily contaminated with Eurocentrism.