Interpreters in Early Imperial China

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 interpre Interpreters in Early Imperial China Editorial page Title page LCC data Table of contents Preface Introduction Acknowledgments Chronology 1. Perceptions of translating / interpreting in first-century China Earliest records of labels for interpreters Frontier stories of China: Han and non-Han Chinese Southwestern barbarians in Latter Han China Interpreting encounters with frontier tribes Presentation of the three sung poems Zhu Fu’s perception of Yi Tian Gong’s perception of Yi The emperor’s perception of Yi Implications 2. Bridging language barriers in encounters with China in sixth-century Asia Commercial interests in tribute journeys The Hephthalites The Tuyuhun: “Interpreters” on the Silk Road Silla Homogeneous translators or foreign translators? Chinese learning sphere Scripting of state letters for China: Stakes and strategies Implications 3. Türkish diplomatic correspondence to Sui China (581-618): Was it translated? Studies on ancient diplomatic correspondence The Türk and its relations with Sui China The linguistic argument The historical argument 4. Translation officials in Tang China (618-907) Foreign relations and translation officials in Tang China Foreigners in Tang China Central government offices dealing with foreigners Duties of the Court translators Duties of translators in the Secretariat Distinctions between the two kinds of translation officials Contingency measures Implications 5. Interpreters and archival records of foreign contacts of imperial China History of interpreting from national archives Pioneers in the early documentation of interpreters Interpreters as historians Interpreting events and their records in history Implications 6. Interpreters and the writing of histories about interlingual encounters Links between interview reports and historical records Implications 7. Interpreters as consultants in historiography in eighth-century China Historical dimension of Translation Studies Historical interpreting: Real or fictitious Ancient China’s initiatives to explore exotic places Ge Jiayun Jia Dan Implications 8. Interpreters and the making of the Kirghiz Memoir and Kirghiz accounts Interpreters and historiography Historiography and the archives on foreign countries and peoples Interpreters and the making of the Kirghiz Memoir: Circumstantial evidence Interpreting traces in the archived Kirghiz accounts Implications 9. Oral translators in outbound diplomatic correspondence Diplomatic interaction and interpreting An envoy-cum-interpreter tradition in imperial China The survey Outbound correspondence Identity of Shi Jiezhi Identity of Liu Mian The exceptions Comprehension problems in reading Chinese letters Implications 10. Sogdian interpreters in Tang China: An issue of loyalty Cosmopolitan mindsets of Tang China and the recruitment of Sogdian translators Evidence 1: Deploying a Chinese envoy of Sogdian ethnicity China’s dilemma in the deployment of a Sogdian envoy Evidence 2: Soliciting Türkic-speaking translators not affiliated to the Uighürs Implications Conclusion From the archived to the non-archived On interpreters Appendix: The thirteen letters and the two exceptions Bibliographies Index