The question of globalisation and translation has often been discussed in terms of the processes of global capitalist economy and their social, economic and political consequences. Michael Cronin (2003), for example, offers a set of incisive reflections on the changing geography of translation practice in contemporary globalised societies and economies. This chapter aims to highlight some of the intellectual problems in considering the role and context of cultural translation in modern China in terms of modernity and globalisation.

Keeping up with the World

Among contemporary theorists of globalisation, Roland Robertson (1992) was one of the first to emphasise the interpenetration of the dual processes of 'the particularization of the universal and the universalization of the particular' (pp. 177–178). On the one hand, the process of particularising the universal 'does involve the thematization of the issue of universal (i.e. global) "truth"'; on the other hand, the process of universalising the particular involves 'the global valorization of particular identities'. But the crucial point for Robertson (1992) is that the global context of such a valorisation is more important than any specific assertion of particular identity: 'Identity, tradition and demand for indigenization only makes sense contextually . Moreover, uniqueness cannot be regarded simply as a thing-in-itself. [...] In brief, globalization – as a form of "compression" of the contemporary world and the basis of a new hermeneutic for world history – realizes and "equalizes" all sociocultural formations', thereby registering 'the increasing salience of civilizational and societal distinctiveness' (pp. 130–131; original italics). Here, Robertson clearly formulates the paradox that globalisation equalises all cultures and also simultaneously enables each culture to articulate its own distinctiveness.