Local Knowledge in Translation: Mediation and Ethical Orientation in English Translations of Shen Congwen

Abstract

This article examines how Xiangxi folk customs in Shen Congwen’s The Husband and Biancheng are mediated as forms of local knowledge in English translation. It compares renderings in four publications, which together provide three English versions of each work by Ching Ti and Robert Payne, Gladys Yang, and Jeffrey C. Kinkley. Drawing on Zhong Jingwen’s classification of material, social, linguistic, and spiritual folk customs, this study combines the concepts of local knowledge, intercultural mediation, cultural filtering, and translator ethics. The analysis shows that material customs are often conveyed through literal rendering or functional description, though regional specificity may be reduced. Social customs require the reconstruction of institutional relations; linguistic customs depend on oral form, euphemism, taboo, and shared inference; and spiritual customs rely on coherent relations among ritual objects, actions, sequence, and purpose. Ching Ti and Payne generally favour immediate recognisability, Yang balances narrative fluency with selective clarification, and Kinkley more consistently employs descriptive expansion and paratextual explanation, although greater detail does not always ensure accuracy. These recurrent differences are interpreted as historically situated ethical orientations shaped by anticipated readerships, publishing conditions, and reception contexts. Translation therefore not only conveys Xiangxi culture but also determines how its local knowledge becomes intelligible to English-language readers.