Advocacy and recognition: S.I. Hsiung, a translator of Chinese Diaspora

This chapter examines advocacy and recognition as two central concerns of translation. It does so through reference to the work of S.I. Hsiung, a key writer and translator of the Chinese diaspora of the early decades of the twentieth century. This was a time of extraordinary debate in China, when many sought to present a more modern image of the nation in an increasingly fractious geopolitical situation, not only through questioning the conditions of representation and reception of Chinese writing in the context of the colonial Anglophone West but also through rethinking the potential of translation itself to promote the conditions of a more equitable cultural encounter. In this context, diasporic writers like Hsiung turned to translation as a mode of advocacy that had the capacity to function both as a direct antidote to colonial misrecognition and, culturally, ideologically and racially, as the source of a new hermeneutic trust.