Comment on “Chinese Values in English Translation: Issues on Cultural Accuracy and Compatibility and Their Impact on Communication”Xie (2024) addresses two interconnected strands: (a) the translation of philosophical and cultural concepts from Chinese into English and (b) the question of “accuracy and compatibility” of translation in an intercultural environment. Xie (2024) begins by outlining the need to link the reflection on translation with the cultural context, with the implicit claim that translation quality is not only a linguistic but also a cultural-cognitive issue. In the first part, the article identifies “contemporary problems” of Chinese-English translation (insufficient post-editing, cultural differences in literary texts, overly simple methods, poor knowledge of Western culture). The article provides several illustrations (e.g., stylistic and semantic differences of idioms, the “coarse” effect of literalism). In the second part, the article moves on to “the validity of philosophical and cultural thought” and defines a framework in which translation is not a neutral transmission of signs, but a work with values and thought. Xie (2024) then offers a brief overview of translation “ideas” (literalism vs. free translation; “polysemy of one language” and “synonymy of the other language”; and even “three- and four-word synonyms” in English), which he demonstrates with simple examples (“living/alive”, “sleeping/asleep”). The conclusion re-emphasises the necessity of cultural sensitivity and lifelong learning for translators.
The central argument of the article is that effective translation of Chinese philosophical and cultural concepts into English depends on both linguistic accuracy and cultural compatibility, as translation is inherently a cultural-cognitive process. Xie (2024) argues that translation quality cannot be judged solely on technical grounds but must also reflect a deep engagement with cultural context. The article details contemporary challenges in Chinese-English translation, such as inadequate post-editing, cultural gaps in literary texts, simplistic translation methods, and insufficient understanding of Western culture. These issues are illustrated through specific examples like idiomatic differences and the drawbacks of literalism. Subsequently, the article claims that translation is not merely the neutral transfer of signs but an activity imbued with values and ideas. In discussing approaches like literalism versus free translation and synonymy issues, Xie (2024) seeks to demonstrate the complexity of maintaining both accuracy and compatibility. The conclusion reinforces that cultural sensitivity and continual learning are indispensable for translators who aim to achieve communicative success. The first part of the article adequately distinguishes technical lapses (careless post-editing) from systemic obstacles (misunderstanding of cultural references, reduction of methods to the dichotomy of literal vs. free translation). I appreciate that the author does not speak only about individual skill, but about a broader ecosystem: from the setting of translation courses, through work with sources, to exercises in understanding “unusual” fields of meaning.
Short examples (e.g., the differences between “alive/living”, “asleep/sleeping”) are not deeply philosophical. Still, on a didactic level, they show that even seemingly synonymous words are not interchangeable in every context. Combined with examples of Chinese proverbs (“sān sī ér hòu xíng”, “seeking commonality in the different”), the problem is made concrete to the reader: meaning is always a position in the sentence, register, genre, and cultural memory.
The keyword of the article (compatibility) is not fully conceptualized. Sometimes it serves as a means of compatibility with the norms of the target culture, sometimes as a factor in acceptability for readers, and then as if it indicates compliance with the “philosophical core” of the original. For clarity I recommend distinguishing three levels of compatibility (1) pragmatic compatibility, which concerns (the experience of understanding within a specific discourse community; (2) axiological compatibility which is the preservation of the value implications of the expression; and (3) ontological-conceptual compatibility which is the correspondence to the conceptual network of the tradition. While reader studies can measure the pragmatic, axiological, and ontological compatibilities require exegesis and philosophical argumentation. Without these distinctions, “compatibility” risks remaining a vague remains an empty term.
The article repeatedly returns to this simplified opposition. However, in contemporary traductology, other approaches are strongly coming into play: the functional (Skopos) approach (Vermeer; Nord), which is based on the purpose of translation; Nido’s dynamic equivalence, which evaluates meaning in the effect on the addressee; Venuti’s domestication/foreignization, which politicizes choices regarding the “visibility” of the translator and the preservation of alterity; Berman’s deforming tendencies, which draw attention to the systematic “elimination” of foreignness. The inclusion of these frameworks would provide the article with methodological support beyond the framework of intuitive decision-making.
The terms “one language polysemy” and “second language synonym” are understandable, but the professional register works with more precise categories: polysemy vs. homonymy, lexical vs. grammatical synonymy, collocability, and valency. “Three- and four-word synonyms” do not act as a theoretically supporting category; rather, it is a didactic aid that should be placed within the framework of distributional analysis and corpus evidence (e.g., differences between “asleep” and “sleeping” in frequency and collocation profiles).
In addition to adequate translational and NLP sources, the list of works also includes apparently irrelevant references (senolytics in biomedicine, “local translation in neurons,” etc.). This weakens the scientific persuasiveness of the article. I recommend a radical bibliographic restructuring: strengthen primary translation theories, sinological studies on the translation of key concepts (e.g., “rén,” “lǐ,” “dào”), corpus works on Chinese-English equivalences, and primarily empirical studies on the reception of translations by target readers.
The article mentions Anglo-centrism in research and neural models, but does not explain how to connect them to philosophical translation (Xie, 2024). This is where a fundamental extension is offered: (i) terminologically controlled NMT (inserting terminological constraints during decoding), (ii) knowledge-enriched models (linking to ontologies and dictionaries - e.g., HowNet, Cilin - that distinguish semantic roles for philosophical terms), (iii) post-editing protocols with domain experts (philosopher/sinologist + translator), (iv) evaluation metrics beyond BLEU (e.g., COMET, or targeted term consistency tests). Otherwise, the mention of NMT will remain merely decorative.
The unresolved tension between “accuracy” and “accessibility” remains a significant issue. The translation of Chinese philosophy into English faces a dilemma: either preserve the foreignness (foreignization) and risk reduced fluency, or adapt the article to domestic expectations and smooth out specificity. The article discusses “compatibility” but lacks a methodology for calibrating this balance (Xie, 2024). I propose a scalable model: for professional publications, prefer foreignization with commentary (glosses, notes), for popularization outputs, apply more domestication with a visible structure of “translation + explanation of the concept + analogy”.
The article’s main contribution is to forcefully foreground the challenge of translating Chinese philosophical and cultural concepts into English in a way that balances accuracy and communicative effectiveness. It draws attention to the crucial cultural dimension of translation, countering the idea that translation is merely a matter of technical skill. However, the analysis often remains at a programmatic and didactically simplified level, reducing the complex translationological debate to a basic literal-versus-free dichotomy, employing non-standard terminology, and discussing neural machine translation without concrete application. Strengthening the argument requires a reconstructed theoretical framework, more precise terminology, empirical evidence, and a clear methodology, especially protocols for translating expressions that are difficult to convey. These improvements would help make the article a more actionable resource for translators, teachers, and researchers addressing the core problem it identifies: ensuring accuracy and compatibility when translating culturally loaded concepts.
Reference
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XIE, L. Chinese values in English translations: issues on cultural accuracy and compatibility and their impact on communication. Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp journal of philosophy, Marília, SP, v. 47, n. 4, p. e02400121, 2024. Available at: https://revistas.marilia.unesp.br/index.php/transformacao/article/view/15025
» https://revistas.marilia.unesp.br/index.php/transformacao/article/view/15025
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Data availability statement:
The dataset for this article is available in the SciELO Dataverse of the Trans/Form/Ação Journal, at the link: https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-3173.2025.v48.n5.e025199
The dataset for this article is available in the SciELO Dataverse of the Trans/Form/Ação Journal, at the link: https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-3173.2025.v48.n5.e025199
