Lin Shu, invisible translation, and politics

Why do translations frequently operate as allegorical extensions of what the original literally says? Men the translator or re-writer, as the case may be, is only proficient in his native language yet purports to "translate" foreign materials, the roots of allegorical or emblematic readings become a different problem. As the interlocutors of the dead, these "translators" manipulate the invisible text with their collaborators and their imagination. Two cases in point are the late Qing advocates of Western cultural values represented by Shakespeare, and the popular 1904 rendition of Charles and Mary, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by the prolific Chinesec translator and rewriter Lin Shu. This article argues that in their translations of the in visible foreign texts either through mediation or through ideological refraining, the "West" and "China" functioned as two discursive modes through which two sets of values are articulated.