Negotiating Alterity in Translation: Mapping the Cultural Grid in Al-Manfaluti’s Majdolin and Lin Shu’s Zei Shi

Abstract

This paper redefines the translation of cultures as an interpretive and ethical endeavor shaped by historical and ideological influences. It relies on Ricoeur's hermeneutics and Bassnett's cultural analysis to create the cultural grid, which is the set of overlapping pressures and permissions that translators use to deal with differences while making sure that the target culture is understandable. The article demonstrates, through two case studies, Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti’s Arabic Majdolin and Lin Shu’s Chinese Zei Shi, how European narratives are systematically re-inscribed to attain domestic resonance. Al-Manfaluti changes Romantic celestial innocence into Arabic-Islamic modesty (al-hayāʾ) and honor, mostly by leaving things out and changing the way people think about morality. Lin Shu reinterprets Dickensian empathy and social criticism through the lens of Confucian filial piety (xiào), obligation, and historiographical analysis. These interventions are perceived as ethically significant acts of linguistic hospitality that acknowledge loss while preserving meaning under constraint. The study gives a way to compare cross-cultural rewritings that goes beyond just finding mechanical equivalents by showing how translators act as cultural agents and moral lawmakers in the cultural grid. It argues that such rewritings secure equivalence without identity and enable forms of deep endorsement that outlast momentary linguistic similarity.