Translating Yang Masculinity: Intellectual Authority and Hierarchical Dominance in Dewoskin's English Translation of the Sanguo Zhi

Abstract

This article examines how imperial Chinese masculinity is constructed in Kenneth J. Dewoskin's English translation of male fang-shi biographies from the Sanguo Zhi (Doctors, Diviners, and Magicians of Ancient China, 1983). Drawing on imagology's ethnotype concept and Social Role Theory (SRT), the study analyses nine representative examples across three dimensions — intellectual superiority, Confucian virtue, and ruling-class dominance — through Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings reveal a systematic pattern of yang amplification: Dewoskin employs lexical intensification, scope broadening, strategic omission, evaluative addition, and tonal elevation to construct male fang-shi figures as embodiments of intellectual authority, self-restrained moral virtue, and hierarchical dominance. The article argues that this translation pattern produces a yang ethnotype of imperial Chinese masculinity shaped by Confucian ideals and Anglophone readers' pre-existing expectations of Chinese male authority, themselves partly conditioned by Cold War-era American Sinology's institutional agenda. These findings contribute to scholarship at the intersection of imagology, translation studies, and gender studies, demonstrating that historical translation is a key site for the ideological reproduction of national gender images.