Washington University in St. Louis
The Center for the Humanities
Dedicated to Letters and Humanistic Research and Their Presence in Public Life

Translating Global Cultures: Toward an Interdisciplinary (Re) Construction
Tsinghua University - Washington University Conference
Beijing, August, 2006


Translating Global Cultures: Toward an Interdisciplinary
(Re)Construction

"What needs a bridge but two distinct, distant and, not infrequently, unlike things? And in the act of translation, does something translated become an exact replica of its source (currency) or does something translated only approximate or loosely suggest its source (language translation) or does something translated become something completely new and apart from whatever served as its source (a novel being made into a film or a computer’s ability to redesign and reformat data)? In short, what does it mean that two different but related things become linked? What, finally, is translation?"

During mid-August 2006, the Center for the Humanities forged a trip to Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, to examine the complexities and contradictions of cultural exchange and the status of translation as an act of interpretation and transformation in modern society. By studying the practices that surround the various constructions of text and context and how these are “exchanged” in translation, we can analyze the notion of textual “quality” and what constitutes the “universal” as both a global and local concept.