Translating Chinese Culture and History in Museum Exhibitions

This chapter examines the Chinese to English translation of exhibition texts in Chinese museums, with a primary focus on the exhibition labels. Drawing on ideas from both museum studies and translation studies, the author makes an attempt to delineate the textual and extra-textual features of the translation and the related studies. Three key issues about the translation are discussed, namely, terminological accuracy, cultural interpretation, and the translator’s role. Seeing the reading of the target texts as a cross-cultural experience, the author argues that cultural interpretation is essential to effectively communicating the meanings of the exhibition to the target reader and is the most challenging and creative part of the translation. Based on the notion of “interpretive planning”, the translator’s important role in bilingual museum exhibitions is stressed, who mediates the gap between the curator/author and the non-Chinese visitor/target reader through the interpretation of Chinese cultural heritage.