The title for this volume is ‘Translation, Globalisation and Localisation’, which means that all the essays included in this volume at least touch upon the above three issues: translation, which is the main topic that all the essays discuss from their own perspectives; globalisation, which is the broad context in which translation is dealt with, and which co-exists with localisation although more often than not is challenged by the latter. The status of the global/local distinction has changed significantly over the past years, and has been a heatedly debated topic in recent literary and cultural scholarship, but given unique Chinese history, translation studies in China is permeated by global/local tensions, both cultural and political. While a dialectic between the global and the local can be assumed, the distinction between them never really dissolves. In literary translation, which invariably involves at least two languages and cultures – in the case of China, mostly Chinese and English – translating into or out of Chinese signifies ‘localising’ the global or ‘globalising’ the local respectively. The decision to use this paradoxical and dialectical dichotomy as the main title of the present volume can be justified by the urgent need to advance discussion of translation studies in China in a global/local context. Increasingly, translation is viewed as a cultural and political practice, and accordingly translation studies should be based on a clear awareness of the global/local tensions embedded in translation and of its transforming impact on the local cultural paradigm.

It is true that with China’s economic reform and opening to the outside world since the latter part of the 1970s, great changes have taken place in China, including in Chinese academia, especially in literary and cultural studies. There has been a resurgence of interest in translation studies, causing debates and discussions animated by profound sensitivity to issues relating to virtually all aspects of translation. But, in a lamentable though perfectly understandable situation, these exciting changes are little known to scholars outside of China.