Introducing Walter Scott: What Scott Scholars Can Learn from the Prefaces of Chinese Translations of Walter Scott’s Works

Introducing Walter Scott: What Scott Scholars Can Learn from the Prefaces of Chinese Translations of Walter Scott’s Works

The field of world literature has demonstrated how a global readership can discover new readings of a text. This article, accepting that translators have a key role in influencing how their readers respond to a text, considers six late-twentieth-century Chinese translators’ prefaces of the Waverley novels. It argues that by taking the prefaces as a group, a pattern emerges in their interpretation of Scott’s works. Broadly, they suggest that Scott depicts the conflict between feudal and commercial ideologies, and they argue that his novels illustrate issues with commercialism while exhibiting a nostalgia for feudalism. This paper evaluates this claim, and concludes that although this interpretation cannot fully be supported by the texts, it does suggest a new area of exploration in Scott studies.