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.

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.

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.

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。

威妥瑪（ThomasFrancisWade,1818-1895）是英國著名外交官和漢學家。1842年6月2日,身為中尉的他抵達香港,隨英軍第98軍團參與中英第一次鴉片戰爭。在香港休整期間,自學中文,並希望成為「一名國際代理人」,即官方譯員。1846年1月,他再次來到香港,並放棄軍銜,擔任外交譯員。直到1852年3月離開,他在香港工作長達六年之久。不過,他在香港擔任譯員的這段經歷幾乎被學界所忽視,大多數中外學者都只處理他的外交官身份和漢學家身份。
本文通過分析大量原始資料—主要為英國外交部檔案,重構威妥瑪在香港「作為一名國際代理人」的經歷。通過分析他翻譯《京報》、研究中國政府和國情、翻譯《海國圖志》的日本篇以及研究中國軍隊,展現他根據政治、外交形勢的變化,主動調整「代理」的身份和範圍,從而影響兩國之間的關係。本文指出,威妥瑪作為「國際代理人」,不僅處理語言文字工作,更積極介入政治、外交,並有自己的政治、外交、文化立場;在「為女王陛下服務」這個大的框架下,藉翻譯和研究等活動,為國家之間的政治、外交利益進行「代理」,足見外交譯員在近代中英政治、外交上所扮演的重要角色。

The Taiwanese government has formulated a policy to develop the society to be bilingual (Chinese and English), and all information relevant to foreigners’ lives should be available in English. This descriptive study aims to discuss the feasibility of the policy and make recommendations from the perspectives of institutional translation and translation policy, with special reference to translation quality control. The European Commission is taken as a reference case. In the first part, the documentation method is employed. In the second, the article samples eighteen websites of the central government of Taiwan for bilingualization in checking with the performance indicator set in the Blueprint of the policy as a comparative content analysis. Two bilingual texts from two websites are selected to evaluate the translation quality using genre analysis and the functionalist approach. Given the future volume and scale of government translation, more resources are called for, while the professionalization of the industry and a quality assurance (QA) system are recommended.

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。

從晚清戲劇改良開始,戲劇就一直被作為改造社會的工具而存在, 譯者對外國戲劇的關注大都停留在文本之上,劇本與舞臺演出的關 係並沒有得到充分研究和認識,因而翻譯劇本的舞臺演出往往難以 取得成功。民眾戲劇社在對「假新劇」的反思中成立,旨在創造可 以登場的「真的新劇」。他們一方面繼承了新文化運動精神,繼續 關注戲劇的內容與思想性,一方面加強了外國戲劇學理方面的研 究,並以此思想為指導對外國戲劇知識進行了大量譯介,在民初戲 劇觀念從紙面走向舞臺的過程中發揮了關鍵作用。本文將在梳理和 分析民眾戲劇社譯介活動的基礎上,揭示翻譯作為一種研究行為如 何影響戲劇觀念的變化,戲劇觀念的變化又如何反作用於翻譯,對 外國戲劇作品的輸入方式和中國現代戲劇體制的建立產生影響。

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.

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 aim of this essay is to examine how the study of world literature has decisively moved into a new postcolonial direction with the latest investigation of the unnamed Chinese novel on which Goethe formulates his much-quoted world literary imagination. He conceptualizes world literature as a subversive and aspirational imaginary in opposition to the increasingly dominant Hegelian world vision, on the one hand posing itself as an aesthetic cosmopolitanism opposed to French national politics, on the other hand destabilizing the calcifying Eurocentric hierarchy of cultures, languages, literatures, nations, and religions in the 1820s. This world literary imagination is inseparable from the long history of Orientalism, but its newness comes with a pioneering philological representation of China by French Orientalist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat. I illustrate how a hybrid digital methodology in the intersection of German, translation, and postcolonial studies reveals the missing link between Orientalism, Goethe’s notion of world literature, and the Chinese novel.

Part of a larger study on the viability and relevance of symptomatic reading practice to the much broader scope of reception theory and translation criticism, this article investigates a range of discontinuities in two Arabic translations of Gibran’s The Earth Gods, one by the Archimandrite Anthony Bashir and the other by Egypt’s Minister of Culture Tharwat Okasha. Putting to work the methodological assumptions of Venuti’s symptomatic reading, instances of religious correctness and (in)determinacy are examined within the framework of reception theory, specifically Fish’s theory of interpretive communities, to explore how texts work upon individuals to create a community and how a community works upon a text to generate meaning. The analysis ends with a discussion of the temporality of the translators’ interventions and the historicity of reception, with a particular focus on the paratextual reviews of the critical establishment as a situational interpretive community. The symptomatic reading offers pointers as to how the translators experimented with the metaphysical system of Gibran.

In 1886, Li Ruqian 黎汝謙 (1852-1909) and Cai Guozhao 蔡國昭 (dates unknown) translated Washington Irving’s renowned biography of George Washington (1732-1799), which appeared under the title Huashengdun quanzhuan 華盛頓全傳 (A Complete Biography of Washington). It was the first Chinese translation of a biography about George Washington. The translation proved to be a valuable source of information for Chinese readers in the nineteenth century, as it covered the American Revolutionary War and the founding of the Republic, providing insights into American history and politics.
Through the Li and Cai translation, this paper aims to explore how Chinese intellectuals understood and imagined the nature of a modern state during the late nineteenth century. The analysis will be contextualized through a discussion of sovereignty in the history of the interaction between China and Euro-American countries. As Qing China’s foreign relations differed from the Westphalian system of sovereignty featured by the Western “family of nations,” the concept of sovereignty was understood inconsistently. In their interpretation of Western forms of sovereignty, the Chinese translators employed terms such as zizhu 自主 (self-governance), junzhu 君主 (absolute monarchy), minzhu 民主 (republic), and yihui 議會 (parliament), echoing what Henry Wheaton (1785-1848) referred to as “external sovereignty” and “internal sovereignty.” This paper will analyze these terms to uncover changing Chinese perceptions of sovereignty and evaluate their impact on how Chinese intellectuals envisioned a modern state.
The primary approach adopted in this analysis is back translation, which draws on Max Huang’s (2008) work and comparative close reading, enabling a nuanced examination of the differences and contingencies in the meanings of concepts between Western and Chinese contexts. Ultimately, this paper will contribute to our understanding of the political landscape as conceptualized by Chinese intellectuals before the peak of Japanese influence in the early twentieth century.

This article intends to investigate how The Wizard of Oz was introduced, translated, and retranslated in China from the 1920s to the 1970s. Inspired by the historical archives mostly from Shenbao 申報, this paper firstly delineates the early acceptance of the Oz story by revealing how it was introduced, synopsized, and advertised in China between the 1920s and the 1940s. In this part, the novel’s early translation versions are investigated, with a particular focus on its title translation—“Lüye xianzong 綠野仙蹤,” to illustrate an initial acceptance of the novel as a story about gods and spirits. In the second part, as the sociopolitical context underwent major changes after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the translation of the novel was required to conform to the prevailing socialist realist tenets, and the novel was reinterpreted, retranslated, and reshaped as a piece of socialist realist children’s literature. This part concentrates on a comparative reading of Chen Bochui’s 陳伯吹 three translations (published sequentially in 1942-1943, 1953, and 1979). In investigating the translation history of The Wizard of Oz in China in the given period, this study suggests the nature of (re)translation as a complex process with multiple mediating forces.

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.

In the translation history of the Qing Code, George Jamieson used his translation to map a reform route that was neglected in Chinese legal history. Based on first-hand archival material, this article reconstructs the untrodden route by recovering Jamieson’s vision on the value of Qing family law in the new era. Having outlined the legal and social conditions that boosted his assurance, it proceeds to analyze the message he hoped to convey to Chinese lawmakers by probing his opposition to drastic changes and advocacy for gradual reform. In the face of an imminent legal reform, Jamieson attached importance to “selecting” and “adapting” those parts of foreign law that could accommodate native institutions. His dialogue with modern English law in translating Qing marriage law set a model in this regard.

The literary idea of “Shangri-la” has today been realized as a geographic space in the Tibetan borderlands of southwest China. The minority peoples who live within this zone that has seen a massive tourism boom are, in effect, now linguistic “prisoners of Shangri-la”: despite possessing their own minority languages, sociopolitical factors dictate that ethnic minority writers often have little choice but to write in Chinese. Nevertheless, there is a way for them to negotiate a way out of the prison-house of language: foreignizing “inner translations” that rewrite, and destabilize, the landscape itself.
This paper asserts that translation is a defining characteristic of the re-negotiation of peripheral spaces within Chinese minority literature. This study focuses on the construction of minority hometown spaces, such as Shangri-la in Yunnan and the Baima areas of northern Sichuan: both these areas are technically Tibetan according to Chinese state classification, yet they possess unique ethnic identities that are constructed in Chinese literature via phonetic translations (often re-translations or re-transcriptions) from the minority language into Chinese. The literary re-translation of local toponyms serves to contest official, Sinicized naming practices, producing nativized place names that act as markers, signposts from which we can see how meanings and mappings of ethnicity, nature, and culture can be shaped and reshaped in translation.

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.

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.

In this study, I apply the concept that “meaning is not located in a source culture or a target culture in a univocal signifying movement; rather, it is being created endlessly in a third cultural space of growing conflict and complexity” (Carbonell 1996, 90) to my investigation of Dutch sinologist Gustaaf Schlegel’s translation strategy. When compiling his Dutch-Chinese dictionary, Schlegel was not simply transferring directly from language A (Dutch) into language B (Chinese), but tapping various sources to find what he called “genuine equivalent.” Schlegel’s dictionary goes beyond his language and culture pair of Dutch and Chinese, citing German and French sources, referencing entries in a Japanese dictionary, and offering comparisons with English interpretations, to provide details that users can understand and associate with. This method helped to create meaning in the third cultural space. This paper analyzes the impact that Schlegel’s knowledge of a complex combination of languages and cultures had on the meaning that was being created in the third cultural space.

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.

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.

學界對二十世紀之交上海文學期刊中翻譯的研究越來越多,但對香港同期中文期刊的文學翻譯的研究卻不多。在文獻回顧的基礎上,本文首先從期刊「內部對話性」和「外部對話性」的角度,對香港《新小說叢》的連載翻譯文學進行整體描述;其次,本文對該刊連載的翻譯作品《情天孽障》進行個案研究,並與同一時期同一作品刊載於上海文學期刊《小說林》的《第一百十三案》進行文本細讀與比較。本研究聚焦迄今較少受到關注的香港期刊連載翻譯文學,通過搜尋和細讀現存期刊資料,對期刊中兩個譯文的相異之處進行了梳理和總結,從女性形象、法律思想和司法制度、宗教等維度對兩個譯本進行了分析,揭示了這一時期西方翻譯作品與兩地社會與文化的互動。

1952年,文學刊物《人人文學》在香港誕生。目前學界認為《人人文學》由美國出資創辦,刊物中的文學翻譯也因而被認為是1950年代美國在港翻譯計劃的一環。事實上,《人人文學》並未直接接受美方支持,所以其翻譯活動不是政治宣傳的工具,而是編者黃思騁文學思想的體現。本文使用一些學界鮮少討論的材料,梳理黃思騁的閱讀史,分析其文學知識的建構,並在此基礎上討論他的文學知識如何影響《人人文學》的翻譯選材。希望閱讀史的研究方法可以為研究香港的南來文人提供新路徑。

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.

馬若瑟是法國耶穌會士,康熙年間抵華,晚年遭雍正流放於廣州。 他在此地法譯了八首《詩經》中的詩,1735 年獲杜赫德收編於《中華 帝國全志》之中,是為《詩經》西傳之始。馬若赫所譯《詩經》八首, 全都出自〈雅〉與〈頌〉,獨缺〈國風〉,顯示馬若瑟意非抒情文學, 重點全在聖王與王治之上。他的翻譯詮解,是典型的索隱派手法, 帶有強烈的天主教義的暗示。本文勾稽所隱,揣度馬若瑟的翻譯關 懷,讓我們一窺早期《詩經》歐譯和《聖經》之間的聯繫。

The British Empire was a latecomer in establishing Chinese studies. British Sinologists made strenuous efforts to establish the first program at the University College London in the mid-1830s. The empire did not contribute to the making of it. University College London, the institution where the program was set up, was apathetic about the whole establishment. When the first term ended, University College London was unwilling to continue the program despite the clamor for learning Chinese in the society. The program was finally revived in 1846, only this time at another college at the University of London. Relying on an extensive amount of private and public archival records centering on Sir George Thomas Staunton, this paper demonstrates that it was under his patronage that the Chinese program was reinstitutionalized in London. Known to be an unassuming political figure, Sir George Staunton was determined to rekindle the program. Not soon after the Treaty of Nanking was signed did a scandal of translation break out: an article in the peace treaty was missing in the translated version. The interpreter for the British Empire was accused of being bribed by the Chinese to betray the British Empire. Was it true? Or was this simply a political intrigue to humiliate the British? In fact, during the war, Staunton, being an old Chinese hand and an expert of Chinese translation, had already warned about the vulnerability of the government in view of the chronic lack of competent interpreters. However, as party politics prevailed, his good intentions were ignored. Even worse, he was sidelined. After seeing that the scandal had hijacked Britain’s war glory, he was resolute in fixing the problem. This time he used his own might to set the tone for British Sinology for years to come.

In this article, the author examines the prefacing of the translation of Wu Zhuoliu’s Orphan of Asia in relation to the notion of Orientalism, first exploring the rewriting of prefaces as a type of Orientalism, by studying the differences between the Chinese and English introductory paratexts. The author questions whether scholars can move away from this prefacing system that produces uneven knowledge. Orientalism, as defined by Edward Said (1978a, 3), is “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” Said’s argument extends beyond his original focus of the Middle East as Oriental. For scholars of East Asian studies, Orientalism is also a familiar term. In Dru C. Gladney’s (1994, 94) discussion of national representation in China, the term “oriental Orientalism” is coined to address internal Orientalism. This examination of Orphan of Asia demonstrates how preface writing is a powerful producer of knowledge, and the author argues that Orientalist notions are intermingled within the practice of preface writing. Because Orphan of Asia has multiple translations, it has multiple introductions as well. Hence, it is meaningful to examine these texts and the treatment of the original introductions. It is especially noteworthy that the two former Chinese editions of the classic include a translation of the original Japanese preface and a rewritten Chinese preface, while the English edition presents a new foreword. These trilingual paratexts serve as primary texts, which are taken from the Chinese (1977)1 and the English (2006) renditions.

The study of effective and innovative translation pedagogy has been drawing increasing attention in recent years, but the training of adaptive and elastic competence is somewhat overlooked. This study investigates the importance of strategic translation through the theoretical lens of Verschueren’s (1998) Adaptation Theory. The analysis is based on a case study of the 2001 Sino-American Hainan airplane collision crisis, and in particular the pivotal role of different versions of the American “two sorries” letter in facilitating the resolution. It highlights the need to incorporate language adaptation and the interests of all parties in a translation. This study argues that translation is a negotiable and adaptable process, influenced by both overt and covert components, and that this process should be reflected in translation education by fostering the ability to get behind the text to cater to the interests of all interested parties: that is, to cultivate adaptive and elastic competence. The findings suggest that a realistic, balanced, and robust account of adaptation and elasticity is needed for effective translation education.

Described by Charles Lamb as “a man in a thousand,” Thomas Manning developed a very strong interest in China at a time when there were less than a handful of British who had studied Chinese. Through different means and channels, he learned the Chinese language, and then went to Canton (Guangzhou), Hué in Annam (Vietnam), and Calcutta to look for an opportunity to enter inland China. Between 1807 and 1816, he occasionally translated for the East India Company in Canton. In 1811, he successfully reached Lhasa, Tibet, being the first British ever to reach this sacred place. A keen advocate for an embassy to Peking, he went as far as writing to King George III to urge him to send one. He claimed that he should be enlisted because his proficiency in Chinese had surpassed that of all Europeans. He was appointed one of the four translators when the Amherst Mission was finally sent in 1816. After the mission, he brought two Chinese to London, with a plan to teach some British to learn Chinese there before they went to China. Despite his legendary life, Manning has not been much studied by historians of Sino-British relations. Based on newly available materials, the present paper examines the life of this “eccentric” genius, redrawing his unique and uneven path as a Sinologist in the first half of the nineteenth century.