With an emphasis on the vicissitudes of perpetual change in China, the central concern of this chapter is with the production of a single progressive cultural trajectory of translation studies, developing from the traditional perception of translation characterised by Yan Fu’s famous tripartite division of it into xin (faithfulness), da (expressiveness) and ya (elegance), through to various attempts at the construction of cognitive schemas to understand the nature, processes and consequences of translation. It is not exactly a summary of the trajectory as such but rather an overall survey of progress, no matter how tortuously slow, in theorising translation in China, particularly in modern and contemporary times. It is no exaggeration to say that translation studies in modern China is largely about reinterpretations, and occasionally, redefinitions of Yan’s century-old paradigmatic model of translation, but it also understandably gives rise to numerous ways to break the chronic impasse. In light of the changing political and ideological contexts that require an increasing awareness of audience and purpose, many questions have been raised to remove what seem to be self-imposed restrictions on the further development of translation studies in China.

Many of the underlying cognitive concepts with regard to translation have been explored and developed, although the inherent approaches are mostly fragmentary and sometimes rather crude and simplistic. And admittedly, most of the proposed theoretical considerations are not sufficiently thorough and systematic. Nonetheless, the fact that various approaches have been experimented with constitutes the process of Chinese interrogation and theorisation of translation issues. Also, it needs to be pointed out that part of the modern history of translation studies is one of an avoidance of, or resistance to, translation theory.