EST, the European Society for Translation Studies, is an international society of translation and interpreting scholars. Its activities are devoted to Translation Studies, the name now given in English to academic reflection and research around translation and language interpreting (traductologie, Übersetzungswissenschaft, traductología are names given to the same discipline in French, German and Spanish respectively).

EST was founded in Vienna, Austria in September 1992 as a:
· network for stimulating and coordinating research into translation and interpreting
· forum for the exchange and dissemination of new ideas and insights in Translation Studies
· centre for information and know-how on issues of quality and training in translation and interpreting

EST has set up a summer school scholarship program, a Young Scholar Award, an EST Translation Studies Literature Grant, and is supporting and/or sponsoring various research and research training activities. Translation scholars and other individuals and organizations interested in Translation Studies are welcome to join their efforts to ours in developing this young discipline.

EST has focused on drawing attention to new research in Translation Studies, and encouraging young scholars to join the collective endeavour. This year again, EST will sponsor one EST member to attend a TS Summer School. The scholarship will be for 1,000 Euros. The deadline for submitting applications for the EST Summer School Scholarship is 1 May 2007. Students preparing a doctoral dissertation in the field of translation studies are invited to apply.

http://www.est-translationstudies.org/  

In the cities, and of greater importance to the decision-makers pushing the law through, a growing middle class with its wealth tied up in houses wants to pass these assets on to their only children. These people are anxious about the security of their property and, like their fellows in the countryside, are becoming more assertive. In other countries the emergence of this group as an important political constituency has been followed by an unstoppable drift towards greater pluralism.

A journey of a thousand steps/万里长征

In the short term, however, do not expect too much. The latest law is only one step in the slow trudge China is making out of the blind alley of Maoism. One big change in 2002 allowed businessmen to join the Communist Party, thus turning the revolutionary vanguard into a networking opportunity for bosses. In 2004 China changed the country's constitution to enshrine private-property rights. But the constitution is less a prescriptive document than a constantly changing description of what has just happened. So nothing changed.

简言之，也不要抱太大期望。新法只是中国在喵喵主义的死胡同里艰难踅摸的第一步。2002年的一次大转变是允许商人加入共党，使得革命先锋的队伍里有了混入企业老总的可能。2004年将私有财产神圣不可侵犯写入宪法。但宪法变来变去也不过是对刚发生的事情加以描述，所以其实什么都没变。

This latest law, likewise, will not bring the full property-rights revolution China's development demands. Indeed, it will not meet the most crying need: to give peasants marketable ownership rights to the land they farm. If they could sell their land, tens of millions of underemployed farmers might find productive work. Those who stay on the farm could acquire bigger land holdings and use them more efficiently. Nor will the new law let peasants use their land as security on which they could borrow and invest to boost productivity. Nor, even now, will they be free from the threat of expropriation, another disincentive to investment. Much good land has already been grabbed, and the new law will merely protect the grabbers' gains.

新法同样不会掀起中国发展进程中需要的全部私有财产革命。诚然，最迫切的需求无法满足：给予农民可以自由转让的土地所有权。如果农民能够出卖土地，上千万农村剩余劳动力可能会找到生产工作。待在田里的可能会得到更多土地财产，生产效率得以提高。农民（farmer和peasant的区别，参见秦晖：农民问题：什么“农民”什么“问题”？http://www.e-economic.com/info/7444-1.htm）以抵押形式转让土地，借款投资提高生产效率的做法同样被新法禁止。甚至直到现在，他们都无法摆脱土地征用的阴影，投资积极性受挫。大片好土地早被抢走，新法只会保护强盗的赃物。

This law cannot in itself resolve the murkiest question: who owns what? This is especially true in the countryside, where the mass collectivisation during Mao's Great Leap Forward of half a century ago left farmland “collectively” owned. Peasants have since been granted short (30-year) leases. But even outside agriculture it is often unclear whether a “private” enterprise is really owned by individuals or by a local government or party unit. Conversely, some “collective” or “state” enterprises operate in ways indistinguishable from the private interests of their bosses. Moreover, should an underdog try to use the new law to enforce his rights, the corrupt and pliant judiciary would usually ensure he was wasting his time. Since the Cultural Revolution, when the NPC passed just one law between 1967 and 1976, the legislature has been legislating quite prolifically. But the passage of laws is not the rule of law.

该法无法从根本上解决最讳莫如深的问题：谁拥有什么？由于喵喵半个世纪前的大跃进使得农田“集体”所有，这个问题在农村尤其见怪不怪。农民从那时开始准予了短期（30年）租赁。但是在农业领域之外，“私营”企业是否真是个人所有，还是政府或党政机关所有，一直甚嚣尘上。然而某些“集体制”或“国有”企业的运营模式和单位老总的个人利益反倒休戚相关。此外，如果哪个贱民胆敢动用新法主张个人权利，腐败逢迎的司法机关通常会直言他不过浪费自己的时间云云。NPC在1967-1976年文革期间只通过了一部法律，文革之后立法却多如牛毛，诚然通过法律不代表执行法律。

Which leads to a final obstacle: without an accountable executive branch, the necessary reform of the legal system is not going to happen. As the passage of the property law itself demonstrates, the party is showing itself somewhat more responsive to public opinion than it was in the past. But it still runs a government that does its best to silence most dissenting voices, strictly controls the press, and lavishes resources on the best cyber-censorship money can buy. Property rights are a start; but only contested politics and relatively open media can ensure that they are enforceable.

Petty-bourgeois fanaticism can be good for you/糜烂有理，小资无罪

No revolution today then. Yet in the long term the leftist opponents of China's property law are surely right to be worried about what has been begun this month. They understand the law will entrench the rights of the carpet-baggers who have looted the state as it has privatised assets. They also understand that the law, for all its technicalities, does not chime with an avowedly communist government.

The leftists derive their theory not from Confucius, but from Marx. Were the latter writing today, he would surely see in China a revolution waiting to happen—or perhaps two. One is the bourgeois revolution led by the emerging property-owning middle class that the new law will help. The other is the potential for the simmering resentment in the countryside to boil over, perhaps in frustration at the law's shortcomings. Property rights are at the root of both—which is why the dozing NPC delegates may have started a process this month that will one day change their country completely.

左派的理论来源不是孔夫子，而是马克思。如果马克思在今天出书，他一定会预见到中国山雨欲来的一场革命——可能是两场。一场是受到新法保护的正在崛起的有产阶级领导的资产阶级革命。另一场是潜伏在乡下蓄势待发的、可能受到新法漏洞消极影响的革命。两者的根源皆是所有权，难怪打盹的人大常委本月可能将要“天翻地覆慨而慷”。