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In the early years of the new millennium, Chinese scholars in translation studies were still debating, belatedly, the “cultural turn”, particularly with regard to two issues: (1) the distinction between the ontology of translation and the ontology of translation studies, and (2) the so-called “paradigm shift” triggered by the cultural turn. Stemming from a critique of the two ontologies and questioning the paradigm shift, this paper serves the following critical purposes. It appeals for a return to textuality by reinstating the role of language in translation studies; i.e., it seeks to clarify how language functions on the boundary between translation and non-translation on both the object-language and meta-language levels, and calls for a new meta-theoretical orientation of translation studies. Scholars participating in the Chinese debate over the cultural turn have regrettably overlooked the fact that semiotics has long since renovated translation studies, especially in terms of the discipline’s system-specificity and intersystemic relationships. Semiotic input on translation studies may enable the Chinese researcher to better formulate, pose and answer the crucial question: What is translation? Four versions of a semiotic approach to translation studies can be identified or envisaged: (1) the influence of Peircean “semeiotics”; (2) a structural linguistics-informed methodology, such as that of the Russian formalists and their Slavonic followers; (3) the impact of biosemiotics; and, finally, (4) the influence of cultural semiotics represented by the Tartu School. This essay provides a critical survey of the Chinese debate on the cultural turn and suggests a prognosis based on the aforementioned semiotic approaches.

On the Cultural Turn of Translation Studies in China in the New Millennium: A Semiotic Appraisal and Prognosis