Translation Seminar Series

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。