China's Outbound Academic Translation and Publication: A Sociological Study

This monograph provides a rare sociological analysis of China’s efforts to globalise its academic knowledge through translation and international publication. This monograph provides a rare sociological analysis of China’s efforts to globalise its academic knowledge through translation and international publication. Centring on the Chinese Outbound Academic Translation Initiative (COATI), a major State-funded programme administered by the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences, it examines how academic knowledge is translated, negotiated, and institutionally positioned within global knowledge economies. A distinctive contribution of the book lies in its use of first-hand auto-ethnographic data drawn from the authors’ direct involvement in COATI-funded projects, offering unique insider perspectives on institutional processes, professional negotiations, and translation decision-making. These insights are complemented by interviews with authors, translators, editors, and publishers, alongside analysis of policy documents, translation drafts, and detailed case studies of selected volumes. Theoretically, the book reconceptualises translation as a socially embedded practice shaped by networks of human and nonhuman actors, policy agendas, institutional structure, and agency. This volume will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students in Translation Studies, Chinese Studies, sociolinguistics, and global knowledge studies concerned with contemporary knowledge circulation.