Social Sciences in China Review

No.2, 2019

Three Principles and Three Misunderstandings of Theoretical Evaluation: Taking the Evaluation Deviation for Medio-ranslatology as an Example (Abstract)

Zhang Ying

In Professor Wang Xiangyuan’s series of books criticizing medio-ranslatology, through the three principles of theoretical evaluation—namely in respect to the “incommensurability” of the theory, in respect to the theory proposer’s definition of core concepts, and in respect to the proposer’s positioning of their theoretical goals and their positioning in their era—evaluating the theory from synchronic and diachronic dimensions, we can find the following three misunderstandings: that Wang arbitrarily defined “orthodox translation” when criticizing medio-ranslatology and thus excluded it from translation studies, that he put the two concepts “creative treason” and “destructive treason” together for discussion despite them being at different theoretical levels and theoretical goals, and that he never evaluated the theoretical vitality of medio-ranslatology from the synchronic and diachronic dimensions. Therefore, if there is a bias, a real theoretical innovation will be influenced. Appropriate reflection will help more innovative theories in the field of Chinese translatology to develop.