Introducing Chinese Philosophy to Western Readers – Lin Yutang as a Cross-cultural Interpreter
Abstract
The article reconstructs selected motifs in the philosophy of Lin Yutang, a twentieth-century Chinese thinker, translator and editor, especially popular in the West, undertaken, as it were, on the margins of his work to explain and popularize Chinese culture and philosophy in the West. Lin reflects on issues such as how to effectively and accurately explain a radically alien civilization to the Western-educated reader, in his or her own language, and who can appoint himself as the representative of Chinese culture at all? As a bilingual author, Lin very accurately shows the state of suspension between two cultures, characteristic of an intercultural interpreter who attempts to simultaneously move within two disproportionate, culturally determined conceptual schemes.
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