This essay proposes complexity and computational network analysis as fitting paradigm and methodology for studying contemporary literary translators’ agency. Grounded in the rhizomatic structure of networks, this approach unearths the importance of translation-based literary barters for the robustness and stability of a translation sub-system, in our case the sub-system of contemporary poetry translation from American and Canadian English into Romanian. Using a mixed- method approach that combines close reading (qualitative analysis) and distant reading (quantitative analysis), the research shows that translators possess an essentially connective mind and that their own interests and network of personal connections are salient in starting and maintaining a substantial exchange of inter-cultural transfers in a transnational context. Complexity thinking provides the premises for demonstrating that translation is highly sensitive to its initial conditions of production, thus is reliant on translators, and the computational network analyses prove consequential for documenting the role of translators in initiating and carrying out literary translation projects.

1894年,英國浸禮會傳教士李提摩太英譯了真諦漢譯本《大乘起信論》,並於1907年由上海廣學會出版。此譯本是繼日本學者鈴木大拙出版的譯本以來的第二個全譯本,卻沒能引起學界的足夠重視。本文基於一手史料,分析了此論的作者、整體內容以及核心概念「真如」在李氏的神學思想體系裡通過其英譯本如何再次重構與呈現。本研究的發現如下：李氏受到英國傳教士比爾「偽基督論」的啟示,從此論構建出世界宗教聯合後所獲得的「正義」,而這種正義正是上帝國的主要特徵,也是上帝國得以建立的前提。為充分證明並散播此構想,他通過譯本將原文的「真如」概念以上帝之名義重構,為讀者呈現解讀後不同於鈴木的全新譯本,為其建立上帝國的抱負作了思想準備。

全面抗日戰爭時期的中國戰場是第二次世界大戰暨世界反法西斯戰 爭中不可或缺的「東方主戰場」。抗戰時期由國民政府主導的軍事 譯員訓練班是一項旨在配合援華盟軍對日作戰的創舉,亦是抗戰時 期中國翻譯教育的一個縮影。1941 至 1945 年間國民政府軍委會在 昆明和重慶等地通過徵調或招考,陸續培養了四千餘名英語譯員。 他們大多是來自各高等院校的大學生或是英語較好的公職人員,通 過兩至三個月不等的軍事英語和通譯業務培訓後,分配至中緬印戰 區的美軍機關和戰爭前線任「翻譯官」,為抗戰勝利做出過不可磨 滅的貢獻。本文以國民政府軍事譯員訓練班為研究對象,通過梳理 戰時譯員教育的創辦與培養歷程,旨在回溯抗戰時期中國翻譯教育 發展的歷史經緯,探析影響戰爭中語言教育的深層次社會文化因 素,力求為譯學界重讀二十世紀中國翻譯教育史上的特殊一頁,提 供一些可供鑒取的歷史經驗與文化哲思。

At the turn of the twentieth century, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work was regularly translated into Chinese despite the complexity of the medical terminology that permeates his work. This article considers how references in the Sherlock Holmes stories were rendered in translations published in 1916, thereby bridging the gap between Western and Chinese medical traditions. In particular, it considers how Western medical diagnoses and procedures were grafted onto existing concepts in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) through analysis of the translation methods used. It reflects on the need to make such medical references accessible to non-specialist readers in order to not impede their reading experience. By comparing early and later translations, the article assesses the extent to which Western medicine (WM) permeates Chinese culture at different points in twentieth century history.

This essay focuses on the spatiotemporal notion of liminality and the way it can be mapped onto translation processes and the role of the translator. The concept of liminality can be traced back to Arnold van Gennep’s (1960) rites of passage and their re-elaboration by Victor Turner (1967 and 1974). It has recently been theorized within the social sciences as a central concept that allows a redefinition of the relationship of structure and agency (Thomassen 2014; Szakolczai 2015). In postcolonial studies (Bhabha 2006) and translation studies, it has been frequently used as a synonym of the notions of in-betweenness and third space (Aammari 2017; Bery 2007; Inghilleri 2017; Johnston 2007). However, despite some common traits, liminality offers a more comprehensive and dynamic approach. The notion of liminality is, furthermore, connected to the spatial metaphors of the door (Simmel 1957), the threshold, the arcade (Benjamin 2002 and 2004) and the gate (Tawada 2003; Sakai 2011), which do not conceive of languages as isolated self-contained units but focus on a possible opening between systems whose character is otherwise left unspecified.

周作人在翻譯選目上較為自主,但外部影響亦不容小覷。在為《小 說月報》翻譯的過程中,一方面,他對外國文學的譯介理念深刻影 響著該刊的編輯者,另一方面,沈雁冰等人也有意識要利用周氏兄 弟以往的譯介實績和文壇影響力,從而積極向二人約稿。但是大方 向一致的背後,在對具體篇目的取捨及闡釋上仍可看到周作人自身 趣味與刊物路線之間的博弈關係。

During the Cold War, Hong Kong occupied a pivotal role as a bridge between the Free World and the Communist World, making it crucial for the United States (U.S.) to counter the spread of communist ideologies. Literary translation emerged as a significant avenue for advancing U.S. foreign-policy objectives by winning over the hearts and minds of audiences worldwide. Consequently, the prevalence of U.S.- commissioned literary translations in Hong Kong became a crucial aspect of Cold War dynamics. Existing scholarly research has primarily focused on the financial support provided by the U.S. to intellectuals involved in literary translations, while overlooking the nuanced perspectives and attitudes of these intellectuals toward such funding. This paper seeks to address this gap by examining the attitudes and reactions of local intellectuals towards financial assistance from the U.S., using Platitude Press (Renren chubanshe 人人出版社) as a case study. It argues that the relationship between the U.S. and local intellectuals during the Cold War era was not one-sided but rather interactive, leading to a more complex and multifaceted history of Cold War activities in Hong Kong.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the imagined community created when student translators envisage a target reader for whom they are translating and to highlight pedagogical implications for developing awareness of language and culture in the second language (L2) classroom context. As mediators between source and target culture, language learners dealing with translation, i.e., translation studies students who are also L2 learners of at least one of the languages in the language pair, may also have a role in an imagined community—they have an imagined or implied target reader for whom they are translating, and serve their roles as communicators between the imagined source and target communities. They make connections and fill in the gaps that may be found during the translation of a text from one language and culture to another.
This paper looks at the student contemplations during the process of translation in an imagined community they may imagine themselves to be in. Five Korean into English translation classes were offered to students at a university in Seoul, South Korea. Presenting qualitative excerpts from the data, this paper discusses the imagined community painted by the learners during their process of translation, and how they negotiate the identities of the target audience members with whom they are aiming to communicate.

In a descriptive approach for a specific study, this article aims to explore the existing translation beliefs, management, and practices of Hong Kong. It first reviews the literature on translation policy and summarizes certain key concepts for application. In the focus case, it is found that the overt bilingual language policy of Hong Kong does not lead to any explicit translation policy. In some other official statements, translation management and practices are mentioned. It carries out institutional bilingualism with bilingual mandatory translation at the official level. For the small percentage of ethnic minorities, mostly South Asians, the government has set up guidelines to provide daily life assistance at departmental levels, including translation and interpretation. Certain non-governmental organizations are also involved. This is a typical case of a “cross-portfolio policy-making” approach to translation policy. The study recommends explicitation of the language and translation policies, along with their rationale, and the integration of the translation policies for minority languages. The Hong Kong case study could serve as a reference for policymakers and researchers, while the application of key concepts helps build the methodology for analyzing translation policies elsewhere.

It is generally agreed that the translation of children’s literature is an under-researched area. With only three books focusing on the subject, even rarer is the research on children’s literature in China, and none of which dwells on the translation of American children’s literature in modern China, not to mention the research on the translation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s children’s literature. Yet Hawthorne’s children’s literature enjoyed a wide circulation in Republican China (1912-1949), which even overshadowed the translation of his often-quoted classics. Based on André Lefevere’s rewriting theory, this article argues that the translation of Hawthorne’s children’s literature was initiated in late Qing when the dominant culture changed its view of children and the importance of children’s education. But it also benefited from ideological advocacy for child-orientation and from the poetic urgency for the establishment of children’s literature in China. The translation, supported by various forms of patronage, ushered in a period of prosperity in the May Fourth era and greatly affected the creation of children’s literature in China as an independent category. Then, confronted with the nationwide political agenda of the impending war, the translation of Hawthorne’s children’s literature lost its impetus beginning in the late 1930s, although there were some translations or retranslations of Hawthorne’s famous fairy tales sporadically in the 1940s.

This paper examines translations and corresponding paratexts published by the Australian academic Geremie Barmé ( 白杰明) under the banner of “New Sinology” in 2022. It starts by tracing the origins of New Sinology, an activist approach to studying and interacting with greater China that Barmé proposed in 2005 and which Duncan Campbell and Edward McDonald helped define in China Heritage Quarterly (2005- 2012) and elsewhere. Barmé’s background as an eyewitness to the Cultural Revolution and his associations with Chinese dissidents are discussed as factors contributing to the development of New Sinology, as is the discipline’s locus in Australia and New Zealand, two English speaking countries adjacent to the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s geographic sphere of power. This paper subsequently examines Barmé’s translation efforts in 2022, a year of tumult in the PRC. Barmé’s translations of a Chinese expatriate’s reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a Shanghainese man’s furious reaction to the COVID-19 lockdown, and overseas Chinese students’ reactions to the Beijing Sitong Bridge Incident, A4 Revolution, and Ürümqi apartment block fire are examined alongside the extensive contextualizing writings Barmé attaches to these translations. Informed by the writings of Mona Baker and Maria Tymoczko, this paper finds that Barmé’s translations are framed so as to weave translated voices into a narrative of intellectual resistance spanning centuries of Chinese history and discusses the implications of this approach. The article ends with an attempt to use a novel metaphor inspired by sampling-based music production to better understand the nature of activist translation.

作為一本鼓吹暴力革命的小說,《自由結婚》披著翻譯的外衣,猛 烈抨擊晚清政府與西方列強,體現出強烈的政治動機。而以翻譯的 面目示人,可以使小說一方面吸引目的語讀者,另一方面規避權力 機構的審查。對於偽譯者而言,「翻譯」不是目的,而是一種「抵抗」 甚至「介入」的手段。偽譯集中體現了行動主義翻譯,是其最激進 的表現形式。以翻譯之名行革命之實,偽譯者充分利用目的語文化 中的主流意識形態,將偽譯在社會轉型時期所能起到的變革甚至顛 覆作用發揮得淋漓盡致。

Metaphor translation has been a matter of concern in translation studies because its interlinguistic transfer can be impeded by cross-cultural and crosslinguistic differences. Since the inception of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), which focuses on the conceptual structure of metaphorical language, a range of studies have emerged to investigate metaphor translation from a cognitive perspective, presenting an eclectic mix of research questions and methodologies. This paper is targeted at illustrating what the cognitive approach has offered to translation studies by providing a critical overview of recent research in metaphor translation from a cognitive perspective. It is pointed out that cognitive theory can get to the heart of metaphor, an essential cognitive device for meaning-making, as well as translation, a cognitive activity. Illustrations from the literature show that a cognitive approach can account for in-depth conceptual transfer in the analysis of product- and process-oriented metaphor translation. The cognitive approach also provides important insights into translation as cross- cultural communication by offering a redefinition of culture. Within this context, the paper provides multilingual illustrations while paying special attention to translation between culturally-distant languages, e.g., English-Chinese and French-Chinese translation. Lastly, it is argued that there is potential in combining cognitive theory with translation theories such as Descriptive Translation Studies and the Interpretive Theory of Translation.

The present study aims to investigate how far Taiwanese people’s postcolonial identities could be represented via comparing a Japanese novel, Orphan of Asia (1945), with its Chinese (2008) and English (2006) translations. The research methods include a comparative analysis of the Japanese source text (ST) and its Chinese and English target texts (TTs), followed by a cross-textual analysis of these Chinese and English TTs.
The key findings are firstly, compared with the Japanese ST and its Chinese and English TTs, more translation differences and problems were identified in the English TT, presenting different ways of expressing Taiwanese people’s colonial situations, which as a result may or may not successfully represent Taiwanese people’s postcolonial identities. Secondly, the present study shows that the translators’ ideological intervention may influence the representations of Taiwanese people’s postcolonial identities to some extent, pointing to the heterogeneity in postcolonial translation. Thirdly, the present study stresses the significance of using foreignization in postcolonial translation to potentially reshape the target readers’ world knowledge. For future translation research on postcolonial identities, the present study provides implications of the analysis of translators’ translation techniques related to ideological involvement.

This paper offers a critical analysis of the reinterpretation of female authority in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by exploring the role of Portia and her transformation in early Chinese translations. First, it provides a brief survey of recent interpretations of Portia’s role in The Merchant to familiarize the reader with current debates and the different readings. The objective is to present a concrete understanding of Shakespeare’s intentions regarding sexual dynamics in order to assess how these elements were recontextualized in Chinese translations for specific cultural purposes. Next, the paper examines the first Chinese translations of the play to determine how faithfully they preserved the original portrayal of female characters. Finally, this paper analyzes Bao Tianxiao’s adaptation, The Lawyeress, considering how deviations from Shakespeare’s original text reflected evolving attitudes toward sexual equality in early twentieth century China and contributed to the creation of a uniquely feminist reading of Portia’s character.

No complete translation of Feng Menglong’s 馮夢龍 (1574-1646) famous trilogy of short stories Sanyan 三言 exists in Italian. However, over the last hundred years, various translators have been attempting to translate excerpts of Feng’s trilogy, with alternating results. This paper analyzes the existing Sanyan stories available in Italian.
Firstly, this paper tackles the pioneering period at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Feng’s huaben 話本 were first presented to an Italian audience, albeit in a heavily edited form. The earliest Italian versions of Sanyan stories were mostly rewritings and were heavily influenced by the preexisting foreign versions of the stories they chose to translate.
Secondly, after the Second World War, Feng appeared as the author of stories that included anthologies of Chinese literature, again some of which were still translated from other European languages (mostly English and German).
Thirdly, the decade of the 1980s was a period when Italian translators, mostly scholars of Chinese literature, decided systematically to translate from the original texts and produced accurate and readable versions, which are still used as references.
Fourthly, in the last decade, a new generation of Sinologists has undertaken the study of Sanyan, and their translations are mostly inserted inside of scholarly publications.
Finally, this paper shows how the approach to translating Feng has changed over the years, from a quasi-manipulation of the original stories to an extreme respect for the source material. At the same time, the need for a complete version of Sanyan in Italian is called into question at the end of the paper.

勒菲弗爾將贊助人定義為促進或妨礙作品的閱讀、創作和改寫的力 量,並特別指出贊助功能主要表現為一種積極的推動力量。之後的 學者在研究個人和機構的贊助功能時,也多將焦點集中於贊助人促 進作品形成和接受,對其妨礙功能關注較少。本文以《金瓶梅》中 性描寫的英譯為切入點,考察文學審查制度在《金瓶梅》英譯本的 形成、出版、推廣和接受過程中既妨礙、又促進的雙重贊助功能。 雖然表面上看似矛盾,但兩種相反功能共現於同一贊助人的現象恰 恰揭示出了贊助系統的層次性、動態性和複雜性。

根據目前掌握的材料看,古漢語中雖然出現過「直譯」,但只是「直」 和「譯」的偶然組合,並不具有語言學意義上複合詞的特徵。這些 「直譯」只是「直接翻譯」的縮略語,和我們現在當作翻譯術語使用 的「直譯」完全不同。而且怎樣的翻譯才算直接,也取決於具體語 境。與「意譯」相對的「直譯」在二十世紀初的報章文牘中已可見到, 但大體上代表一種不恰當的翻譯方法而受到批評。「直譯」一詞實 際上來自日語,日語中的「直譯」係由蘭學家創製,後逐漸成為常 用詞,在幕末明初出版的各類詞典中多有收錄。由於中日共用漢字 系統,作為日語漢字詞的「直譯」可以通過「借形」的方式迅速進入 漢語詞彙 —— 這在十九世紀末二十世紀初的旅日學生留下的記 錄,以及梁啟超等在日本創辦的《清議報》《新民叢報》上的文章中 可以得到印證。

The YouTube Shakespeare phenomenon has been addressed in several studies including those by Christy Desmet (2009, 2014) and Stephen O’Neill (2014, 2015). This paper builds on their work to examine closely the visual, aesthetic and aural strategies of a YouTube video that seeks to make Shakespeare’s As You Like It more accessible to a group of Bengali-speaking students in small town West Bengal, India. The paper examines (a) the means by which the video creator works to activate prior knowledge in his target viewers, (b) the consequent degree of cognitive success he appears to have achieved in terms of summary and explanation, and (c) this video not just as a teaching tool, but as a piece of creative remediation in its own right, and an original contribution to YouTube Shakespeare. The easy access to the visual dimensions of the global popular afforded by immersion in a digital environment both necessitates and enables more flexible and innovative approaches to bringing alive the sometimes archaic language in canonical literary texts, in this case, Shakespeare’s plays. The paper demonstrates how the video allows the creator to harness the capabilities of one of YouTube’s key pedagogical affordances: the digital image, in conjunction with the site’s potent play and gaming possibilities, as well as the sense of community in shared space that it fosters in regular users. The creator’s deployment of images is apparently idiosyncratic; but these images are culled from a wide variety of online loci that are particularly relevant, comprehensible, and attractive to the demographic he addresses. This strategy enables him to use the exciting possibilities of play, exploration, and cross-cultural connection to engage students effectively in a text recognized as challenging in the Indian context. A related broader argument made here pertains to the role of such digital videos in the shaping of the Global Shakespeare that scholars such as Alexa Huang have highlighted in the last decade. Teaching/explainer videos like the one analyzed in detail here, which combine the exoticism and excitement of globally sourced digital images and the youthful power of play with specific local references and an accessible vernacular voiceover can make a crucial contribution towards reshaping a new generation of glocal non-Anglophone iterations of Shakespeare.

十九世紀中國文學作品英譯史的現有研究中,學界對幾位知名漢學家的探討頗為豐富,可是應當注意到,包括文學翻譯在內的十九世紀英國漢學的發展同樣離不開大量在華西人的積極參與,其中許多人的貢獻仍未得到足夠關注。本文的研究對象李思達（AlfredLister,1842-1890）就是這樣一位還不為人所知的譯者,他於1865年以香港翻譯官學生身份來到香港,在殖民地政府中歷任多職,曾擔任驛務司（PostmasterGeneral）和庫務司（Treasurer）等重要職位。自從來港學習中文開始,李思達便關注中國知識,在不同漢學期刊發表多篇中國研究文章及翻譯作品,尤其傾心於中國文學的翻譯。本文通過發掘史料及文本考析,梳理李思達翻譯中國文學作品的選材、觀念及方法,結合他的殖民地經驗及當時中國研究語境,探討文學翻譯實踐如何發生及展開,其中又展現了怎樣的文學眼光,為我們理解十九世紀中國文學英譯史帶來新的發現。

This review provides a critical review of Chunshen Zhu’s monograph, Fathoming Translation as Discursive Experience: Theorization and Application (2021). Zhu aims to develop a “positive mode of translation studies” through his Structure of Meaning (SOM) model, which conceptualizes the making of meaning across three dimensions— compositional, interactional, and experiential. However, this review argues that SOM presents an overly static and idealized view of the translation process that neglects the potential for communicative failure and experimental translation practices.
Drawing on theories from Derrida, Bakhtin, Kristeva, Barthes, Massumi and Robinson, the review identifies several limitations in Zhu’s approach. It argues SOM assumes a metaphysical ontology of fixed authorial intentions that fails to account for the iterable and disseminated nature of textual meaning. Communication is presented as certain rather than acknowledging factors like double reading and the uncontrollability of effects. The model also imposes artificial separations between translation dimensions that obscure their interdependent, performative nature.
The review then considers alternative perspectives that could address these issues, such as conceptualizing translation as iterated meaning-making through the relay of texts’ trace elements. I also examine how recognizing the “death of the author” and the intertextual constitution of texts undermines claims to intrinsic intentions. The importance of embracing communicative instability and experimental practices is highlighted.
While acknowledging that SOM provides a model of normative translation, I argue that Zhu’s static structuralism neglects the productive dynamism of dialogical, performative, and experimental approaches. I aim to prompt revision of rigid ontological assumptions and consideration of translation’s social enactment through heteronymous narrativity. The increasingly narrow specialization of translation studies has recently been recognized as a serious problem. How can anyone possibly understand the field as a whole, when so many scholars are deploying research methodologies that baffle almost everyone else?
While this reviewer does not have a solution to those problems, Chunshen Zhu, in his Fathoming Translation as Discursive Experience: Theorization and Application (hereinafter referred to as Fathoming Translation), claims to. Zhu’s solution is to delineate “a positive mode of translation studies” (15), or positive translation studies for short, which according to him is “explorative, descriptive, analytical, explanatory, and predicative rather than prescriptive” (16), with the wish to build an interdisciplinary network among linguistics, literature, culture, sociology, etc. so as to provide a coherent theoretical model for translation studies. By framing the making of meaning into a three-dimensional structure (SOM, or structure of meaning) before applying it to discursive experience, exploring the concept of Unit of Translation (UT), and ultimately fathoming translation “as cross-cultural text-sign production” (23), Zhu describes his positive translation studies thus: It describes and analyzes translation as a phenomenon of cross-lingual and cross-cultural meaning making, putting forward hypotheses about it in terms of norms (i.e., “normal” rather than “normative” practices) and explaining their workings in the production, operation, and reception of a translation, during which meaning is realized as discursive experience triggered by the text and undergone by the reader in a particular social situation. (15)

While in-between knowledge has proved to be vital for the growth of translation studies, the actual and potential influence of translation theory on other disciplines has received little attention. Its contribution to digital humanities, for example, has been considered mostly in relation to the use of translation as a tool to disseminate knowledge at research events. Although in recent years digital humanities has shown increased interest in languages and linguistic diversity, its techno- linguistic foundations remain limited to English.
Translation supplies digital humanities with an interesting epistemo-methodological problem that challenges monocultural epistemologies in text computing. While distant reading in one language is relatively straightforward, computation across languages faces many challenges, including Anglophone bias, economies of scale, blackboxes, and lack of phenomenological depth. If we can solve these problems, disrupting monolingual practices in knowledge production would be one of many benefits of cross-linguistic computation.
In this paper, I will discuss the affordances of translation by drawing on my ongoing research, including the DRaL (Distant Reading across Languages) project which began with the concerns of how to make digital research epistemologies more inclusive of and more open to languages other than English.

In early twentieth-century Hong Kong, the rendition of medical terminology in the translated detective stories of Chinese-language periodicals reflected translation as a touchstone of the early exchanges between Western and Chinese medical culture. Among them, the literary translation Qi Wang Hui (1906) is a case in point. In the Chinese version, the Western terms for medical instruments, drugs and diseases, among others, were inconsistently translated. Some of the terms were translated literally, with the original meaning largely preserved, whereas some others were translated using words from Traditional Chinese Medicine. Others were translated as Chinese referents of more general concepts. The different strategies for dealing with the translation of various terms reflected the unbalanced recognition of Western medical knowledge and technology in the Chinese cultural context.

The translation of the Chinese character yi ( 夷 ) as “barbarian” caused a myriad of issues between Britain and China during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When translating Chinese documents in 1861, Thomas Francis Wade (1818-1895) defended the use of the character by Qing officials and explained, “I incline to believe that the word barbarian was here introduced by mistake.” This was a unique occurrence. By comparing Wade’s various translations of yi, this article supplies ample examples of how the correlation between his various applications of yi coincided with the changing state of Sino-British relations. On the surface, his varying points of view appear contradictory. However, upon closer inspection, they are not inconsistent and were applied for the purpose of shaping Sino-British relations, as he adjusted the translation to coincide with the climate of Sino-British diplomatic relations. In addition, while being a diplomatic interpreter, he used the translations of yi as a bargaining chip to further political interests during negotiations. This further reflects the complexity of being a diplomat and interpreter overseeing Sino-British diplomacy.

Seen through the lens of André Lefevere’s concept of rewriting, a translation is not simply a static text, but a cultural and even a political act exercised by players at both the individual and institutional levels during the translation process. Jesuit missionary-translators in early Qing China especially encountered pressures, challenges and support from their patrons as factors of control in their translations. Joachim Bouvet and his two protégés, Joseph de Prémare and Jean François Foucquet, were the three representative Figurists of the time. The Figurists, a group of Jesuits who focused on the re-interpretation of Chinese classics, advocated the esoteric doctrines of the Dao. Despite both being called followers of Bouvet, Prémare and Foucquet diverged in their separate interpretations of the Dao. Their own preferences and propensities were part of the reason for this, though patronage also played a significant role, which reinforced and supported their personal interpretations of the Dao. This paper will examine two intellectual webs of relationships and auspices, those of Prémare and Foucquet. Examining their correspondences and manuscripts stored in the Vatican Library and the Archives Jesuites de Paris, I will outline the profiles of the two Figurists and identify the institutional or individual support each received. Furthermore, the intellectual webs of their patrons not only made an impact on how each man developed and circulated his knowledge of the Chinese classics, but also influenced how they interpreted the Dao and the Daodejing. Each of their trajectories in associating Christianity with the Dao also made a lasting impact on the next generation of Jesuits in China on their understanding of Dao and Daoism.

The taking of a critical stance toward particular translations has a long history in translation criticism, but the position against translation itself has been studied only piecemeal and without an eye to the commonalities and divergencies in the various stances that motivate it or to its divergent nomenclature. “Resistance to translation” is often evoked as a talisman of a text’s untranslatability (e.g., Apter 2013), but it can denote a translatorial opposition: refusing to translate or else translating subversively. The stance against translation may be born of various resistances: feminist, indigenist, postcolonial, or anthropological. To Robinson’s (1996) translation as taboo (owing to the ontological and theological status of the source), we can add aesthetic objections registered by those against translation. Non-translation, as a wholesale policy or a philosophy, is sometimes absolute. I briefly catalog some forms of anti-translation poetics: pseudotranslation, displacement, accentedness, untranslation, intradução, detranslation, counter-translation, distranslation, dystranslation, hypertranslation, mistranslation, transcreation, translelation, non-translation, partial translation and half-translation, literary machine translation, rhizomatic translation, and transtranslation. Critical linguistic-ideological stances and subversions of translation proper, these projects or platforms are meant to produce or champion everything from censure or opacity, to reinscription (“counter-translation”) or greater clarity of the source.

This paper argues that handy translation strategies and a proper view of the original text, instead of talent and educational background, are the major reasons for good translations, by using the example of Y. R. Chao’s translations of the Alice duology. By reviewing and comparing existing research papers, this paper tries to identify current misunderstandings of the duology as well as of their translations. Then by applying Chao’s translation philosophy (represented by the dimensions of fidelity) to the analysis of the translated poem “Jabberwocky,” tentative answers to existing confusions are provided. Then problems of Chao’s dimensions of fidelity are discussed. In the end, an example is presented to show how translation strategies like those of Chao’s can practically lead to better translations.