In another sense, however, the core of the book is something quite different: a theoretical corrective to the type of translation scholarship that is (a) Europe-centered, (b) target-culture-centered, and (c) text-centered. By contrast, McDougall wants to retheorize translation in terms of (a) China, (b) an authoritarian governmental agency in the source culture that wants to control every aspect of translation without the slightest interest in or knowledge of possible target readers, and generally (c) the sociology of translation. Certainly her title suggests this sort of theoretical intervention: [Translation Zones] in [Modern China]: [Authoritarian Command] versus [Gift Exchange]. The only one of those four noun phrases that is not steeped in theory is "modern China"; Mary Louise Pratt's theory of contact zones obviously informs the main title and the book as a whole; and each of the book's three parts also has its own special theoretical orientation: