On October 22, 2025, Theo D’haen, Senior Member of the Academia Europaea and Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at KU Leuven (Belgium) and Leiden University (the Netherlands), was invited to deliver an academic lecture titled World Literature in Translation: From China to the World for faculty and students of the School of Foreign Languages. The lecture was chaired by Professor Su Ping, editor-in-chief of Island Studies Journal (an SSCI-indexed journal) at the School of Foreign Languages. Associate Professor Kristian Van Haesendonck, Dr. Chen Huafei, and master's and doctoral students in related research fields attended the event.
At the beginning of the lecture, Professor D’haen drew on his early teaching experiences in Europe to introduce the academic trajectory of from the local to the global, highlighting the profound impact of geopolitics and geoculture on literary dissemination. He pointed out that discussions on literature in translation should not be confined within a single culture but should be examined within the dynamic evolution of the world system. Only in this way can we truly understand how literature gains vitality and influence in a global context.
First, Professor D’haen explored the paradigm of comparative literature from a macro perspective, emphasizing its role as a crucial component of geocultural construction and a key pillar in the development of global humanities. He argued that the contemporary world literary system is increasingly moving toward integration, with translation serving as the core medium driving this process. By reviewing theories from prominent translation scholars, he highlighted that translation is not merely an act of linguistic conversion but a way of constructing cross-cultural knowledge.
As the lecture deepened, Professor D’haen conducted a close textual analysis using Li Bai’s poem Quiet Night Thoughts and its multilingual translations, examining the aesthetic differences and cultural orientations in French, German, and retranslated versions. He noted that the variations between translations reflect the tension between two translation strategies—foreignization, which reveals the differences of other cultures, and domestication, which makes the translated text more accessible and resonant within the target culture. Professor D’haen particularly emphasized that domestication can, in certain contexts, better evoke cultural experiences in readers, thereby deepening cross-cultural understanding. Finally, he returned to the core issues of geopolitics and geoculture, pointing out that translation practices effectively constitute a process of reproducing cultural geography. Through translation, literature not only crosses linguistic boundaries but also reshapes the distribution of cultural power and cognitive frameworks within the world literary system.
During the subsequent Q&A session, faculty and students engaged in lively discussions on topics such as the relationship between translation studies and literary studies in comparative literature research, and the future directions of translation studies in the context of globalization. Professor D’haen summarized and elaborated on how translation serves both as an extension of literary research and a vital tool for constructing global knowledge systems in the era of globalization. He also provided valuable learning suggestions for the audience.
This lecture delved into the pivotal role of translation in shaping the world literary landscape from both theoretical and case-study perspectives, offering faculty and students a new lens through which to understand the globalization of comparative literature. Professor D’haen’s presentation not only demonstrated profound academic insights but also inspired reflections on how Chinese literature can, through the medium of translation, generate lasting and widespread influence within the global humanities.
Speaker Profile:
Theo D’haen is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at KU Leuven (Belgium) and Leiden University (the Netherlands) and a Senior Member of the Academia Europaea. He has served as a member of the Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee of the Academia Europaea, as well as the editor-in-chief of its journal European Review. Professor D’haen has held prestigious positions including the Erasmus Chair at Harvard University as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, the Chang Jiang Scholar Distinguished Visiting Professor at Sichuan University, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has also been a visiting professor at the Sorbonne University, the University of Vienna, the University of the Netherlands Antilles, and Tsinghua University. His research extensively covers (post)modernism, (post)colonialism, and world literature. Recent notable works include: World Literature in an Age of Geopolitics (2021), The History of World Literature (2024), The History of European Literature (2025), and the forthcoming World Literature as Geoculture.
