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Visibility and Invisibility of the Translator in H.A. Giles’s A History of Chinese Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2020

Peina Zhuang  and
Yina Cao
Peina Zhuang
Affiliation:
College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, 24 Yihuan Road, Chengdu610064, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]
Yina Cao
Affiliation:
College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, 24 Yihuan Road, Chengdu610064, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The writing of literary history, generally speaking, is a matter of selecting and organizing literary works according to aesthetic judgement and historical values. If one writes the literary history of a foreign culture, however, at least if one wants to include samples of literary works, one must contend with the issue of translation, not only in the sense of having to choose which source texts to translate but also in that of choosing among existing translations or of translating oneself. The dual role of a historian and a translator is a challenging and complicated balancing act, as proven in the case of H.A. Giles (1845–1935), whose 1901A History of Chinese Literature is the first Chinese literary history ever written in English. As one of the then leading sinologists in Europe, Giles had contributed tremendously to the dissemination of Chinese literature by way of smooth translations that appealed to his English readers, but which also formed an obstacle for the reader’s proper understanding of the history of Chinese literature. The evidence for this comes from his misguided take on the dual aspects of visibility and invisibility of the translator’s identity in writing about a foreign literature.

Type
Focus: Through Chinese Eyes
Information
European Review , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , August 2021 , pp. 523 - 533
Copyright
© 2020 Academia Europaea

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