Translating the Migrant City

This volume reenvisions translation as a spatial, sensorial, and civic practice shaped by migration and urban transformation, using the case study of the eastern Chinese trading city Yiwu to explore the concept of a continuously evolving translational city.

Drawing on ethnographic research in Yiwu, which has evolved from a rural community into a global commercial hub, the book explores how translational activities unfold in everyday zones of contact and cohabitation. To capture these dynamics, Liu sets out the notion of translation landscapes as multilingual, multi-semiotic, multisensory, and multimodal configurations of meaning-making that exceed the boundaries of written and spoken language. These translation landscapes encompass everything from signs and menus to garments, architectural motifs, food rituals, graffiti, body techniques, spatial rhythms, and ambient sounds. Liu also reflects on how translation interacts with governance in superdiverse cities like Yiwu, where formal bureaucratic mechanisms coexist with community-based structures. The book presents translation as a civic and relational practice, offering new ways of understanding how meaning is lived and negotiated through sensory contact and social encounters.

This volume will appeal to scholars in translation studies, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, and urban studies.