On The Diplomatic Translation Under The Socially Conditioned Filter

China's foreign relations in pre-modern and early-modern history have been framed under the traditional tribute system of suzerain-vassal relations between the states of East Asia,a Sinocentric world in which the Emperor treated the rulers of peripheral peoples with an overwhelming benevolence and thereby received their tribute.While the West has been framed under the "modern" or "western" system referred to as international law interpreting states as sovereign and equal members of a larger international community.When western world reached China,it found itself confronting a completely different world.It was the tributary system that the West encountered when it intruded into China in the 18th century.Conflict arose when neither the Western nor the Eastern system could accommodate the other without radical reactions.China was not passively responding to the international challenge posed from the west but in an active fashion created an indigenous space for China in international relations.Translation has played a vital role in the contact between Imperial China and the West in modern history with translation of diplomatic documents witnessing the fiercest confrontation from George Macartney,the first Great Britain's envoy to imperial China in 1793 to the introduction of international law in 1860's,during which the Opium War divided the tribute era from the treaty era,the Chinese Empire entered the Europocentric family of nations diplomatically and began to show symptoms of modern nationalism.As translation can be viewed and described in valid ways from a variety of perspectives with a variety of approaches,the theory of socially conditioned filter offers a new angle to the interdisciplinary study of translation in imperial China from 1793 to 1864.This project studies more concretely how the socially conditioned filter worked in three domains,namely,language,logic and social taboo and how it happened in translation so that it permitted certain experiences to be filtered through while others were stopped from entering awareness when China consciousnessly adapted to the seeming universal categories of international law.The finding indicates that while translation is actually a mixture of repression of facts and acceptance of fiction,it could serve as a response to social unconsciousness and a catalyst for social consciousness with translator being in the vanguard of social change.The socially conditioned filter is the working mechanism of translator's resistance to social unconsciousness.The decrease of repression could lead to social evolution,through penetrating the language and logic filter,the social unconsciousness in relation to the modern diplomacy gradually entered into awareness.This process of transformation in the interpretation of international relations in general and China's view on its role and membership in the community of states was indeed for a large part a process of adopting terms and logic from international law.The translated text as a whole is the combined consequence of language,logic and social taboos,which work simultaneously,none of which is independent of each other.Instead they are interdependent and interactive with each other.While language and logic could loose control to some extent,social taboo would always be as strong as ever,remaining to be an important part in socially conditioned filter.Therefore,it was translation that justified and solidified the traditional Chinese world view on the one hand,and on the other hand,it reformed the social consciousness in acting as a catalyst for social change.