The futility of decades of government efforts to disseminate Chinese literature has triggered discussions among Chinese scholars on
how to translate and who should be entrusted with this task. Some blame the failure on traditional concepts of translation that
overemphasize faithfulness to the original to the point of disregarding target cultural conditions, but others insist that China
should have control over its cultural export and that Sino-English should be used to internationalize English. Findings show that
traditional concepts should not be blamed, as aggressively source-oriented strategies have been used in outbound translation only
in recent years, and that this shift in translation norms in government-initiated outbound translation has spread to non-literary
text types, and also to Hong Kong and Taiwan. The same kind of aggressiveness has recently been displayed in other forms of
cultural export, triggering resistance in other cultures. All these changes may be attributable to a heightening of cultural
self-image. What is needed to address the issue is cultural self-reflection, which will lead to the awareness that economic growth
does not immediately bring cultural prestige, and that source-initiated cultural export efforts may make little difference in
central cultures. Cultural awareness at a higher level can be achieved only through empathy.
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