Interpreters in Early Imperial China

Interpreters in Early Imperial China PDF Author: Rachel Lung
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027224447
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
This monograph examines interpreters in early imperial China and their roles in the making of archival records about foreign countries and peoples. It covers ten empirical studies on historical interpreting and discusses a range of issues, such as interpreters' identities, ethics, non-mediating tasks, status, and relations with their patrons and other people they worked with. These findings are based on critical readings of primary and secondary sources, which have rarely been utilized and analyzed in depth even in translation research published in Chinese. Although this is a book about China, the interpreters documented are, surprisingly, mostly foreigners, not Chinese. Cases in point are the enterprising Tuyuhun and Sogdian interpreters. In fact, some Sogdians were recruited as China's translation officials, while many others were hired as linguistic and trading agents in mediation between Chinese and Turkic-speaking peoples. These idiosyncrasies in the use of interpreters give rise to further questions, such as patterns in China's provision of foreign interpreters for its diplomatic exchanges and associated loyalty concerns. This book should be of interest not only to researchers in Translation and Interpreting Studies, but also to scholars and students in ancient Chinese history and Sinology in general.

Interpreters in Early Imperial China

Interpreters in Early Imperial China PDF Author: Rachel Lung
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027224447
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book

Book Description
This monograph examines interpreters in early imperial China and their roles in the making of archival records about foreign countries and peoples. It covers ten empirical studies on historical interpreting and discusses a range of issues, such as interpreters' identities, ethics, non-mediating tasks, status, and relations with their patrons and other people they worked with. These findings are based on critical readings of primary and secondary sources, which have rarely been utilized and analyzed in depth even in translation research published in Chinese. Although this is a book about China, the interpreters documented are, surprisingly, mostly foreigners, not Chinese. Cases in point are the enterprising Tuyuhun and Sogdian interpreters. In fact, some Sogdians were recruited as China's translation officials, while many others were hired as linguistic and trading agents in mediation between Chinese and Turkic-speaking peoples. These idiosyncrasies in the use of interpreters give rise to further questions, such as patterns in China's provision of foreign interpreters for its diplomatic exchanges and associated loyalty concerns. This book should be of interest not only to researchers in Translation and Interpreting Studies, but also to scholars and students in ancient Chinese history and Sinology in general.

The Perils of Interpreting

The Perils of Interpreting PDF Author: Henrietta Harrison
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069122546X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
A fascinating history of China’s relations with the West—told through the lives of two eighteenth-century translators The 1793 British embassy to China, which led to Lord George Macartney’s fraught encounter with the Qianlong emperor, has often been viewed as a clash of cultures fueled by the East’s lack of interest in the West. In The Perils of Interpreting, Henrietta Harrison presents a more nuanced picture, ingeniously shifting the historical lens to focus on Macartney’s two interpreters at that meeting—Li Zibiao and George Thomas Staunton. Who were these two men? How did they intervene in the exchanges that they mediated? And what did these exchanges mean for them? From Galway to Chengde, and from political intrigues to personal encounters, Harrison reassesses a pivotal moment in relations between China and Britain. She shows that there were Chinese who were familiar with the West, but growing tensions endangered those who embraced both cultures and would eventually culminate in the Opium Wars. Harrison demonstrates that the Qing court’s ignorance about the British did not simply happen, but was manufactured through the repression of cultural go-betweens like Li and Staunton. She traces Li’s influence as Macartney’s interpreter, the pressures Li faced in China as a result, and his later years in hiding. Staunton interpreted successfully for the British East India Company in Canton, but as Chinese anger grew against British imperial expansion in South Asia, he was compelled to flee to England. Harrison contends that in silencing expert voices, the Qing court missed an opportunity to gain insights that might have prevented a losing conflict with Britain. Uncovering the lives of two overlooked figures, The Perils of Interpreting offers an empathic argument for cross-cultural understanding in a connected world.

Translating China

Translating China PDF Author: Xuanmin Luo
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1847693857
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Translation has been instrumental in opening the door between China and the rest of the world from ancient times to the present day, and has helped facilitate cultural exchange and the sharing of knowledge. This book makes and important contribution to the study of translation into and from Chinese. A wide range of topics are covered, such as Chinese canonization of Buddhism, Chinese cultural identity and authenticity in translation, Chinese poetry, opera, politics and ideology in translation, and the individual contributions made by translators to modernity and globalisation. The analyses and arguments offered by the authors make this book a must read for anyone interested in translation from a Chinese perspective.

Translating Early Modern China

Translating Early Modern China PDF Author: Nappi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198888154
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The history of China, as any history, is a story of and in translation. Translating Early Modern China tells the story of translation in China to and from non-European languages and Latin between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and primarily in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Each chapter finds a particular translator resurrected from the past to tell the story of a text that helped shape the history of translation in China. In Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu, Latin, and more, these texts helped to make the Chinese language what it was at different points in its history. This volume explores what the form of an academic history book might look like by playing with fictioning as part of the historian's craft. The book's many stories--of glossaries and official Ming translation bureaus, of bilingual Ming Chinese-Mongolian language primers, of the first Latin grammar of Manchu, of a Qing Manchu conversation manual, of a collection of Manchu poems by a Qing translator--serve as case studies that open out into questions of language and translation in China's past, of the use of fiction as a historian's tool, and of the ways that translation creates language.

Interpreting Chinese, Interpreting China

Interpreting Chinese, Interpreting China PDF Author: Robin Setton
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027286914
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
China’s emergence has generated a wave of interest in interpreting and interpreter training. First published as a Special Issue of Interpreting (11:2, 2009) this collection of papers by six leading researchers from the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas, some based on recent PhDs, explores topics as diverse as historical conceptions of the interpreter’s role, interaction with linguistic minorities, methods for training and assessment, and negotiating hazards like speed, register or the cultural divide in conference, courtroom and community. The volume also includes an Editor’s foreword contextualising the Chinese interpreting scene for the international reader, an overview of the fast evolving landscape of interpreter training and research in China, and two critical reviews of textbooks used in home-grown training programmes.

Translating Early Modern China

Translating Early Modern China PDF Author: Carla Nappi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019263626X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The history of China, as any history, is a story of and in translation. Translating Early Modern China tells the story of translation in China to and from non-European languages and Latin between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and primarily in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Each chapter finds a particular translator resurrected from the past to tell the story of a text that helped shape the history of translation in China. In Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu, Latin, and more, these texts helped to make the Chinese language what it was at different points in its history. This volume explores what the form of an academic history book might look like by playing with fictioning as part of the historian's craft. The book's many stories—of glossaries and official Ming translation bureaus, of bilingual Ming Chinese-Mongolian language primers, of the first Latin grammar of Manchu, of a Qing Manchu conversation manual, of a collection of Manchu poems by a Qing translator—serve as case studies that open out into questions of language and translation in China's past, of the use of fiction as a historian's tool, and of the ways that translation creates language.

New Insights in the History of Interpreting

New Insights in the History of Interpreting PDF Author: Kayoko Takeda
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027267510
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Who mediated intercultural exchanges in 9th-century East Asia or in early voyages to the Americas? Did the Soviets or the Americans invent simultaneous interpreting equipment? How did the US government train its first Chinese interpreters? Why is it that Taiwanese interpreters were executed for Japanese war crimes? Bringing together papers from an international symposium held at Rikkyo University in 2014 along with two select pieces, this volume pursues such questions in an eclectic exploration of the practice of interpreting, the recruitment of interpreters, and the challenges interpreters have faced in diplomacy, colonization, religion, war, and occupation. It also introduces innovative use of photography, artifacts, personal journals, and fiction as tools for the historical study of interpreters and interpreting. Targeted at practitioners, scholars, and students of interpreting, translation, and history, the new insights presented in the ten original articles aim to spark discussion and research on the vital roles interpreters have played in intercultural communication through history. Now Open Access as part of the Knowledge Unlatched 2017 Backlist Collection.

An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation (Volume 2)

An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation (Volume 2) PDF Author: Martha Cheung
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134829388
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Translation has a long history in China. Down the centuries translators, interpreters, Buddhist monks, Jesuit priests, Protestant missionaries, writers, historians, linguists, and even ministers and emperors have all written about translation, and from an amazing array of perspectives. This second volume of the seminal two-volume anthology spans the 13th century CE to the very beginning of the nineteenth century with an entry dated circa 1800. It deals mainly with the transmission of Western learning to China – a translation venture that changed the epistemological horizon and even the mindset of Chinese people. Also included are texts that address translation between Chinese and the languages of China's Central Asian neighbours, such as Manchu, which was to become of crucial importance in the Qing Dynasty. Comprising 28 passages, most of which are translated into English for the first time here, the anthology is the first major source book of its kind to appear in English. It features valuable primary material, and is essential reading for postgraduate students and researchers working in the areas of Translation, Translation Studies and Asian Studies.

An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation (Version 1)

An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation (Version 1) PDF Author: Martha Cheung Pui Yiu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317639278
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Translation has a long history in China. Down the centuries translators, interpreters, Buddhist monks, Jesuit priests, Protestant missionaries, writers, historians, linguists, and even ministers and emperors have all written about translation, and from an amazing array of perspectives. Such an exciting diversity of views, reflections and theoretical thinking about the art and business of translating is now brought together in a two-volume anthology. The first volume covers a time-frame from roughly the 5th century BCE to the twelfth century CE. It deals with translation in the civil and government context, and with the monumental project of Buddhist sutra translation. The second volume spans the 13th century CE to the Revolution of 1911, which brought an end to feudal China. It deals with the transmission of Western learning to China - a translation venture that changed the epistemological horizon and even the mindset of Chinese people. Comprising over 250 passages, most of which are translated into English for the first time here, the anthology is the first major source book to appear in English. It carries valuable primary material, allowing access into the minds of translators working in a time and space markedly different from ours, and in ways foreign or even inconceivable to us. The topics these writers discussed are familiar. But rather than a comfortable trip on well-trodden ground, the anthology invites us on an exciting journey of the imagination.

Translation and Creation

Translation and Creation PDF Author: David E. Pollard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Based on the evidence of translations made, this volume deals with the reception of Western literature in China from 1840 to 1918. It deals with aspects of the influx of translated fiction and discusses the adjustments made by translators to suit the prevailing aesthetic, cultural and social norms.