Translation Seminar Series (Since 2001)

What would happen if translation theories and cultural studies talk to each other? In this talk, Dr Cynthia Tsui will reveal that “translation” can be used as a thinking method that sheds light on other disciplines. Although translation is traditionally viewed as a linguistic practice, it visualizes a reasoning model of the “in-between”.

In this seminar, I will compare the concept of Translation Competence with a concept that I have called Translator Competence and which is more closely associable with (though very far from alignable with) the notion of competence which we find at play in theoretical linguistics.

Adaptation Studies have become very popular in recent years in many university departments, especially those of English Literature and Film Studies, with a growing number of books, conferences and journals in the area. This talk begins by examining the interface (or lack of interface) between Translation Studies and Adaptation Studies, also introducing the concept of appropriation, and examples will be given from adaptations and appropriations of the works of William Shakespeare, particularly Othello.

Chinese-English dictionaries typically offer as the closest English equivalents of rén 仁 “benevolent/-ce, kind/ness, humane/ness,” and Mencius’s English translators by and large stick to those translations as well. Following the lead of James Legge, for example, D. C. Lau and the translators of the Shandong Friendship Press edition meticulously translate it in almost every case as “benevolent” or “benevolence,” and most Mencius scholars writing in English, whether Chinese or non-Chinese, also translate it as “benevolent/-ce”; David Hinton uses “humane” and “humanity.”

By the nineteenth century, “culture” and “civilization” had been translated into different languages in Europe and beyond, and both came to be regarded in the West as “international” concepts. A careful study of the translation history of these two terms, however, would reveal that European internationalism was not only deeply implicated in colonialism, but also heavily fraught with nationalism inside Europe.

The foundational narrative of the life and deeds of the Buddha (c. 557- 483 BC) is the Sanskrit epic Buddhacharitam by Ashvaghosha (1st century AD). As part of the great enterprise of translating Buddhist texts from Sanskrit, this work too was translated into Chinese as Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King by Dharmaraksha (420 AD).

A key mechanism in the process of understanding a text involves the recognition and/or building of connections between the signs within the text and the systems of signs without. It can be said that because of the infinite possibilities for making such connections, a reader can interpret in myriad ways, though always within the parameters set by the text as well as by what Stanley Fish has termed the “interpretive community.”

Spanning over more than forty years, Eileen Chang’s Chinese-English translation (1920-1995) constitutes an extremely important part of all of her translation activities. Her Chinese-English translation began in 1952, right after she had arrived in Hong Kong as an exile from the Chinese mainland.

This is an anatomy of the process that led to five translations of Chinese poems written in traditional modes – three jueju, one wuyan lüshi, and one qiyan lüshi — by the poet Wann Ai-jen (poems and translations to appear in the November issue of Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine).

American writer Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) is a significant figure in 20th century Sino-American interaction. Buck was “mentally bifocal”. Her nearly forty-year stay in China and the second half of her life back in America, put her in a unique position in Sino-American conflict. Buck’s masterpiece, The Good Earth describes family life in Chinese village in early 20th century.

This presentation tries to analyze cultural genes involved in understanding and translating Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Medicine, a great and large Chinese classic, conceived in antiquity, developed in Warring States and compiled in the Qin and Hand Dynasties, characterized by elegant language, abstruse concepts, excellent theories and detailed discussions.

Interpreting research has generally been thought of as being too abstract, brain breaking and boring by interpreting trainees. This is true when compared with interpreting practice, which enables interpreters to make a fortune, meet interesting people, and travel to different parts of the world.

After the U.S. forced the opening of Japan in 1854, the Japanese government was in desperate need of knowledge of Western countries, particularly their system of international law, which was the basis of the treaties that Japan was being forced to sign. Thus they began to send young Japanese scholars abroad who had been trained in Dutch learning and thus knew the Dutch language, hitherto Japan’s only window on the West.

Most of the previous researches on translator’s notes were conducted from a prescriptive perspective, such as stipulating the situations under which the notes should be added or specifying the elements of notes, etc. Contrary to these studies, the present research will look into the early translation annotations of Zhou Shoujuan—a novelist and translator during the late Qing and early Republican period in China—from a descriptive approach.

In our complex world of migration, war, and globalization, translation among languages and cultures is everywhere. As citizens of the twenty-first century, we inevitably think in and through translation. Yet we have only begun to explore its contemporary modes of operation, its challenges and its promise for study in an international and interdisciplinary context.

In his edition and translation of the 三字經 Sanzijing as a textbook for learning to read Chinese, Herbert A. Giles glossed each word’s etymology, semantics and connotations. When he glossed 家 jia as a pig beneath a roof, he parenthetically remarked to his intended British readership that “our” Irish neighbours would certainly understand this.

I shall present a simple, flexible and highly relativistic approach to the vexed question in Translation Studies of how to define and circumscribe ‘translation’. My main argument is that in our scholarly models we have to make a radical distinction between three dimensions of texts and discourses: their status (what a text is claimed or believed to be in a given cultural community), their origin (the real history of the text’s genesis, as revealed by a diachronically oriented reconstruction) and their features (as revealed by a synchronic analysis, possibly involving comparisons).

The article attempts to re-perceive, re-think and hence re-define the category ‘traditional Chinese discourse on translation’ in the light of prototype theory. Arguing that ‘traditional Chinese discourse on translation’ is a prototype category with two defining prototypical features, i.e., fuzzy boundary and graded membership, the author holds that the statuses of different members in the category of ‘traditional Chinese discourse on translation’ range from center to periphery: those drawn heavily from classical Chinese aesthetics and poetics are in the center of the category, and other members such as those involving in the discussion of what makes a translation in the periphery.

喬治三世致乾隆皇帝的國書，是英使馬戛爾尼訪華事件（1792-1794）中的重要文獻。這份文獻的翻譯過程曲折而耐人尋味，保存在清宮檔案中的中文副本顯示，英方以對等的姿態表達友好交往意願的國書，經由翻譯，變成了向中方輸誠納貢的英吉利國表文。本次講座引領大家追溯馬戛爾尼使華過程中的翻譯問題，並從話語的角度，對英王國書及其譯文進行解讀，以揭示從國書到表文的奇特變化，其實是天朝朝貢話語運作的必然結果。

近30年來，中國的翻譯研究蓬勃發展，已經成爲一門獨立的學科，但與西方的翻譯研究並未完全接軌。西方的主流學術思想和規範，例如區分研究和研究對象、區分純研究和應用研究、超然獨立、嚴謹論證等等，在中國尚未得到廣泛的認同。造成這種差異的原因，不單是中國的翻譯研究起步較晚，而且是東西方的學術系統，都植根于自身的文化土壤之中。

For most of his life Brewitt-Taylor (1857-1938) worked for the Imperial Chinese Customs Service; he also achieved distinction as a Chinese scholar. His masterly translation, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, was the first of the major traditional Chinese novels to be fully translated into English, the first draft of which being destroyed during the Boxer turmoil.

In the light of the descriptive and poststructuralist translation theories propounded by contemporary western translation scholars with regard to the reception of translation in the recipient culture, this paper attempts to explain an inexplicable phenomenon in Chinese Bible translation, which is considered irrelevant or simply being ignored in the prevailing approaches to Bible translation.

第一部分：結緣翻譯三十年簡述
第二部分：文學翻譯：重寫與競賽

1. 文學翻譯的特性使重寫與競賽具有必要性
2. 豐繁的翻譯理論使重寫與競賽具有可能性
3. 文學譯者綜合素質的提升使重寫與競賽具有可行性
4. 重寫與競賽翻譯實例舉隅和點評

This talk will address specifically the attitude of the censoring institutions to translation as a force that may undermine the interpretation of reality which the oppressive regimes hold as the official one and as the only one the oppressed populations are allowed to accept as true.

西洋詩歌觀念最初傳入漢語文學圈，有賴於來華的傳教士的譯介。在那眾多的西洋宣教士中，早先是歐洲各國的天主教士，繼而是那些新教傳教士，他們在歷時一千餘年間分四批先後來到中國，這其中又以近代時期英美新教傳教士的人數為最多。就在他們來華傳播宗教活動的同時，又將那些適合於吟唱的西洋宗教詩歌（其中包括英語聖詩）作為一種文化副產品介紹過來，而且從這些作品的生成方式來看，它們最初是譯者在服務於「求善」的宣教目的，而採用詩體形式傳譯過來的西洋聖詩，由此賦予了這些譯作若干「美」的內涵。

本文透過分析兩個當代翻譯的個案，反思：

1. 今時今日「所謂」翻譯工作及「正式的」翻譯工作之間的矛盾與互動；
2. 翻譯工作的本質/角色/使命/責任/地位、翻譯與雙語撰稿如何你中有我我中有你；
3. 翻譯工作如何在專業性、生活維度存在性、文化性、實用性之間尋找平衡；
4. 翻譯工作尊嚴之建立。

History-writing has received a great boost in Translation Studies research in the past decade. However, for many translation histories, reception is conceived largely in terms of how a translator reads a foreign text, not how the ordinary reader “receives” the products of translation. The sidelining of the reader is evident from a cursory look at the histories of translated modern English fiction in China.

Precision in language is relative and conditional, while fuzziness an absolute and universal predicate. Based on this understanding, the seminar talk will focus on how the notion of ‘fuzziness’ functions in translation and translation research.

As a consequence of the dominant sense of centralizing government and management and power, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had only one periodical that was officially circulated during her initial 29 years (1949-1977) for publication of literary works in Chinese translation.

Two-Way Mirrors: Cross-Cultural Studies in Glocalization posits a model of knowledge that stresses the dialectics of knowing, where any view of an object also provides (if one looks for it) a reflection of the subject. All knowing is, in this sense, positional, and deictic: where one is “placed” affects what and how one sees.

What is the nature of poetry, especially Chinese Poetry, and what is the nature of translation. Both are rooted in the tool humans use to understand one another called ‘language’. But in the realm of poetry, what happens when we go from one language to another?

From the rendition of the sacred Hebrew text of Judaism into Greek about twenty-two centuries ago, to the translation of the Christian holy book into minority languages such as Tahitian and Gilbertese in recent decades, the enterprise of Bible translation continues to generate as much interest as passion among both non-believers and believers of the Judeo-Christian faith.

Growing awareness of the responsibility of the translator and interpreter in shaping geopolitical relations led to a surge of interest in the subject among translation scholars in the nineties and the early years of this century. Scholars engaging with issues of power and ideology in this context however tend on the whole to draw on historical examples which, while still highly relevant, have largely lost their political ‘sting’ – in other words, they are largely non-controversial, at least in scholarly circles: Irish history; British colonization of India; Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South America; gender and sexuality.

雖然對社會文化語境中真實口譯活動的研究已初現端倪，但這種研究趨勢目前仍未進入口譯研究的主流視野。正如Pöchhacker（1995）指出的那樣，過去一直處於口譯研究中心地位的對口譯認知處理機制的研究並不能完全代表整體的口譯研究，而對社會文化語境中真實口譯行為和活動及其所涉及的諸多因素以及諸因素之間的互動關係，至今仍未有深入的研究。本研究的目標是，中國語境下職業譯員現場口譯活動規範的描寫研究，將採用國家總理朱鎔基和溫家寶1999、2000、2004、2005、2006年記者會連續傳譯的現場錄音為研究語料。

A new Penguin Classics Book of Changes 易經 presents some interesting challenges. Which book? For which reader? Prof Minford will discuss some of the preliminary moves he is contemplating in this new endeavour.

Social concepts (such as translation, ethics, religion, theory) are widely variable across culture and language. How can academic disciplines be constituted without simplifying this variability and without becoming hegemonic? How can scholars avoid being trapped in the prison-house of their own language? How can scholarship break the confines of what has already been defined and developed?

A brief discussion of the general importance of metaphors as a way of breaking out of old frameworks of thought will be followed by an outline of how different types of translation may usefully be mapped onto various forms of passing (straight passing, blackface, whiteface, slumming, drag, mimicry), and how this new metaphor encourages the reformulation of notions of what the translation process involves, what the role of the translator is, and what some of its social effects might be.

Originally and etymologically, “translation” may have meant carrying across, but subsequently and metaphorically, the primary meaning of the term has come to be the transfer of literary and discursive texts from one language to another. Translation has thus formed a vital medium of communication and exchange across different cultures for over two millennia.

The development of Translation Studies in the 1990s was the natural outcome of an increasing fluid and globalizing world. But that development was preceded by one that was much more political, much more resistant and yet one in which the spirit of translation figured strongly. This was the emergence of post-colonial studies at the end of the 1980s.

The translation discourse in the Republican Era consisted largely of articles and paratexts written by intellectuals in the literary field. Many of them had translated works in different genres from foreign languages into Chinese, motivated by the urge to bring in western knowledge as well as innovative rhetorical devices to enrich the vernacular language.

We mostly think of translation as endeavouring to render an original text in another language without addition, omission, distortion or bias. But what happens when translators find some of the things they are meant to translate objectionable? What if the scene of translation involves a clash of values?

英國著名女作家簡•奧斯丁的《傲慢與偏見》在中國大陸流傳甚廣，譯本繁多，本研究運用女性主義理論與“重寫”理論，研究《傲慢與偏見》在中國大陸出版的全譯本與簡寫本，比較分析譯本與源文的異同，探討通過譯本在中國大陸傳播女性主義的新途徑。

The present study strives to provide a general framework of translatological dictionary studies from the perspective of text linguistics by discussing the intimate relationship between translatological dictionary studies and text linguistics studies, the characteristics of translatological dictionary, the theoretical basis of translatological dictionary as text, and the seven textual criteria and translatological dictionary as text so as to investigate translatological dictionary comprehensively and systematically and further promote translation studies as a whole.

巴赫金在《長篇小說的話語》中提出了”雜語”這個概念，並且具體分析了長篇小說引進和組織雜語的幾種形式。本文回顧了近年來翻譯研究領域內對巴赫金的”雜語”這個概念的挪用，特別是”雜語”與多語文本、方言之間的關係及其在文學作品中的作用。這些社會雜語的方式，在翻譯過程中是否應該得到重視呢？在譯文中又是如何得到處理的呢？本文結合臺灣作家王禎和的長篇小說《玫瑰玫瑰我愛你》及其英譯本，對以上問題進行深入的探討。

Love-letters are a rare example of a truly universal phenomenon. They can be found among all literate civilisations, although literacy is not a prerequisite for sending or receiving them. They are among our most treasured possessions, although the materials are often commonplace and pass through others’ hands.

“Why Study Literature” is an exploration of the heuristic benefits of studying literature, which includes the disciplined development of the following faculties: (1) creative imagination; (2) vicarious sympathy; (3) capacious intuition.

Itamar Even-Zohar has left translation scholars with two hypotheses: that the “normal” position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one, and that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery. He has not explained the basis of these hypotheses, but the answers may be found in his culture theory.

辜鴻銘的儒經英譯，打破了由傳教士、漢學家壟斷中學西漸、製造中國形象的局面，具有反對殖民主義，尤其是文化殖民的初衷與色彩。本文以《中庸》爲例，分析辜氏譯經的特色與策略，指出後殖民翻譯研究中的一些誤區。

“規範” 概念是翻譯研究發展中出現的現象，是二十世紀末的八九十年代的重要課題之一，它標誌著翻譯研究的一個新的轉折點。這裡討論翻譯研究中的幾個重要概念的演進和 “規範” 概念產生的背景，分析它從何而來，會將翻譯研究引向何處，討論與 “規範” 相關的另一個重要概念 “對等” 的演進與發展，以及幾個代表人物（圖里，赫曼斯，切斯特曼等）的共同點與分歧。

A profusion of new terminologies poses a daunting challenge to translators/interpreters in China today. It is a test of their command of two languages and cultures as well as their mental versatility. While reflecting present realities, many of the newly-coined terms are deeply rooted in China’s history and culture.