As a sequel to Sinologists as Translators in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries (2015), the present volume continues to investigate the relationship between translation studies and Sinology, but shifts its focus from linguistic aspects to cultural factors. With the vision of depicting how Chinese works were transmitted across cultural and linguistic borders through translation, this volume comprises 15 articles together with an exemplary introduction, and provides insights into a wide range of cultural aspects of translation in different genres: literature, religion, philosophy, politics, diplomacy, ritual, law, and science.

In the history of translation (from Chinese into European languages), the past half-millennium witnessed a transformation from ‘heady hopes’ to ‘mundane realities’ (p. xvi). Among the early Sinologists, the missionaries were always regarded as the pioneers. Eugenio Menegon's study of missionary translation in Qing Beijing suggests that missionaries constituted ‘a veritable miniature university of Chinese studies’ in the ‘Four Churches’, producing a large number of masterworks as ‘internal reference materials’ (p. xix); some works were never published, but they still exist in European archives today and have been circulated in unexpected ways. For instance, according to Menegon, there is a large Italian–Chinese ‘Vocabulario’ compiled by the missionary Josef Maria Pruggmayr di S. Teresa (1713–91) that is now preserved in the Vatican Library, having twice survived the journey between China and Europe (p. 61), including having been borrowed by the British Macartney Embassy (1792–93).

However, there were still others who pursued Chinese studies without the motivations of Christian religion, British imperial interests, or diplomatic purposes. The case of Thomas Manning (1772–1840), demonstrated in T. H. Barrett's and Edward Weech's research, illuminates such an eccentric but far-sighted mind. Manning travelled to Canton in 1807 and was the first British man to visit Lhasa in 1811, being ‘the only man to have met both the Dalai Lama and Napoleon’ (p. 100). As an interpreter of the Amherst Embassy to China (1816–17), he could speak Chinese fluently with the natives. However, his odyssey was followed by a surprising silence, not only because of his disinterest in fame, but also due to the ‘rising tide of impatience towards China in Britain’ (p. 137) on the eve of the Opium War. As Barrett suggests, ‘when we look at the passion and commitment that his archive now reveals, it is surely the public silence of Thomas Manning that speaks to us most loudly today’ (p. 138). Manning was concerned to discover ‘[a] moral view of China; its manners; the actual degree of happiness the people enjoy; their sentiments and opinions’, which, according to Weech, was a proto-sociological investigation (p. 80). In 1826, Manning published an article on his translation of 38 Chinese jokes—the only work about China that he published during his lifetime. In the preface, Manning argued that, unlike novels, which contained too much personal opinion, jokes were rooted in wide circulation and could support empirical observation of ordinary life within a country.Footnote ¹

Undoubtedly, Manning was right that novels are always engaged with the author's (or translator's) subjective views, as we can see in his discussion on the translation of literature: Xiaofang Wu illustrates a typical example in Timothy Richard's (1845–1919) translation of Xiyouji (Journey to the West 西遊記), in which Richard's belief in ‘Mahayana Christianity’ reshapes his interpretation of the story. Wu argues that the source text for Richard's translation was Huitu zengxiang Xiyouji (Xiyouji with illustrations 繪圖增像西遊記), which was published during 1875–1908, and associates the translation with his previous study on Mahayana Buddhism. According to Wu, Richard regarded Mahayana Buddhism as an Asiatic form of Christianity and considered the ‘Amitabha Trinity’ in Mahayana Buddhism as being equivalent to the Christian Trinity, relating Amitabha, Dashizhi, and Guanyin with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, respectively (p. 306). In particular, Richard repeatedly emphasised that Guanyin played the same essential role as the Holy Spirit, leading sinners to conversion and repentance. He even misread the name of Ling Ji Pusa 靈吉菩薩 and translated it as ‘the most efficient helpful Kwanyin’ (p. 314) in chapter 21. In fact, Ling Ji was another bodhisattva who helped Wukong to tame the Yellow Wind Monster 黃風怪. Furthermore, Wu puts forward that Richard also modified the illustrations from the original. For instance, he replaced two original birds: the great roc (dapengniao 大鵬鳥), which accompanied Tathagata, and the white parrot (bai yingwu 白鸚鵡), which accompanied Guanyin (with a dove in both cases), in order to reinforce the connection between Buddhism and the Holy Spirit.

Such literary translations could not escape scepticism, even from the translator's own disciples. This is also clear from Roland Altenburger's study of the French versions of Yu jiao li（玉嬌梨）—a mid-seventeenth-century scholar–beauty romance (caizi jiaren xiaoshuo 才子佳人小說). Altenburger's analysis of Jean-Pierre Abel-Remusat's (1788–1832) translation contributes to its authenticity and credibility, reconsidering Stanislas Julien's (1799–1873) ‘exaggerated gesture of devaluing his teacher's work’ (p. 173). Altenburger notes that one of the possible motivations for Abel-Remusat to translate Yu jiao li was George Thomas Staunton's (1781–1859) Narrative of the Chinese Embassy to the Khan of the Tourgouth Tartars (1821), which includes an ‘Abstract of the four first chapters of the Chinese novel, entitled Yu-Kiao-Lee’ (p. 156). Staunton also sent his book to Abel-Remusat after hearing of his project to translate the entire text. Regarding technical aids, both Abel-Remusat and Julien worked without any native Chinese assistants. However, in a comparative study on their understanding of the Chinese word yingxiang 影響 (p. 169), Altenburger shows that Julien had misunderstood it, while Abel-Remusat's translation made more sense, perhaps with the help of Joseph de Guignes's (1759–1845) Chinese–Latin dictionary, and probably the Chinese–English dictionary of Robert Morrison (1782–1834).

In contrast to prose, the translation of Chinese verse met with more challenges in Herbert Allen Giles's (1845–1935) Gems of Chinese Literature (1884). Giles was not in the lonely situation that Abel-Remusat and Julien found themselves in and his friend, Gu Hongming辜鴻銘 (1857–1928), occasionally offered some help, although his translation has always been criticised by many scholars as having a lack of verbal accuracy. However, according to Lingjie Ji, Giles's vision for his translation was a ‘literary orientation’; in other words, he intended that Gems was neither a ‘pedagogical tool’ for learning the Chinese language nor a ‘compendium of Chinese knowledge’. Thus, he translated only for ‘literature's sake’ (p. 266). With his strong awareness that the style of Chinese poetry played a central role in conveying the original thought, Giles noted that the style was ‘the last refuge of that old Chinese pride and faith in themselves, as opposed to the outer barbarian’ (p. 275). With regard to his translation of the first sentence in Han Yu's ‘Yuan Dao’ (韓愈《原道》)—博愛之謂仁, Giles faithfully imitated the original parallel and antithesis structure with concise English in the same number of words—‘Universal love is called charity’ (p. 281). Notwithstanding that Giles adopted different translation strategies, he admitted that some Chinese language remained untranslatable and Ji argues that ‘the claim of untranslatability reveals a tension between the expert Sinologist and the humble translator’ (p. 293). Ji's argument implies the nuances in the interaction between Sinology and translation, significantly reflecting the theme of this volume.

However, diplomatic translation accepts a lower tolerance for inaccuracy. Lawrence Wang-chi Wong meticulously explores Robert Thom's (1807–46) translation of the Treaty of the Bogue. As the supplementary of the Treaty of Nanking at the end of the First Opium War, the bilingual drafting of this treaty was solely Thom's responsibility. Nevertheless, the mistakes he made in the translation ‘brought severe harm to British trade and the newly born British colony of Hong Kong’ (p. 188). Particularly in Article XIII, the last long sentence, containing 52 characters in the Chinese version, was absent from the English version. Moreover, one of the clauses in the middle of the Chinese version was altered so that, in the English text, a strict requirement became ‘a choice’ (p. 195). Had he been bribed, or was he just a careless and big-hearted person, echoing his pen name ‘Sloth’ (p. xxv)? More details remain to be discovered.

Likewise, the translation of legal prose also needs a rigorous brain as well as sensitivity to cultural difference. Rui Liu's study on George Jamieson's (1843–1920) translation of Qing widows’ inheritance rights in 大清律例 (The Great Qing Legal Code) reveals that Jamieson built a connection between ‘English equity and Chinese custom’ (p. 357) and suggested the possibility of the development of Chinese law. Jamieson's proto-feminist eyes noticed that protection for the widowed mothers’ trustee roles was nearly absent from the code, which needed to be remedied by using ‘equity in the shape of custom’ (p. 354), as he believed Chinese customs effectively governed people's behaviours and played a similar role to equity in English common law. According to Liu, this resemblance between English equity and Chinese customs forged his idea of embedding English concepts of trust and equity into the Qing code, thus shaping a cross-cultural communication in the territory of laws.

As for the translation of rituals, here the consideration of cultural factors is also necessary. One example is Siyang Shuai's study of S. Wells Williams's (1812–84) translation of Chinese death rituals in Jiali tieshi jicheng (家禮帖式集成), in which Sinology encounters the discipline of social science through Williams's struggle between missionary ideology and his ethnological concerns. Coincidentally, such tension could also be found in the earlier missionary project. Thierry Meynard looks into the conflicting interpretations of the rituals to Confucius between the Spanish Dominican Domingo Navarrete (1618–89) and Italian Jesuit Francesco Brancati (1607–71) in the ‘1668 Rites Controversy’. Based on his personal observation of the rituals in Fujian, Navarrete brought the Da Ming huidian (Collected Statutes of the Ming Dynasty 大明會典) to show that the rituals were incompatible with Christian faith, and Meynard therefore argues that ‘by bringing official texts into the debate, Navarrete raised the controversy to a new level’ (p. 3).

In the hearts of early missionaries, there was less compatibility between Daoism and Christianity, unlike Confucianism and Buddhism. Most missionary research paid little attention to Daoist works, which highlights Joseph Edkins's (1823–1905) translation of Daoist religious texts as an extraordinary occurrence at that time. Benjamin Penny explores Edkins's source texts for his translation. According to Penny, his translation of the Changqingjing jing (太上老君說常清靜經) and the Xiaozai huming jing (太上昇玄消災護命妙經) probably came from a version of the Taishang xuanmen zaotan gongke jing (太上玄門早壇功課經). Furthermore, Penny surmises that Edkins obtained it from a Daoist temple: Wanshou daoyuan 萬壽道院 in Songjiang, Shanghai, one of the favoured places for missionaries to go to preach Christianity.

On reading neo-Confucianism, Joseph Needham (1900–95) remarkably translated Zhu Xi's concept of li as ‘organization’, which reveals a new epistemology about the interaction between Zhu's philosophy and modern science. I-Hsin Chen's analysis shows that, based on the comparison between Zhu Xi and Aristotle, Needham believed in the ‘deeply organic and non mechanical quality of Chinese naturalism’ that made the old Chinese philosophy ‘immune’ from the western debate ‘between the theistic worldview and that of mechanical materialism’ (p. 436); consequently, the argument about ‘form and matter’ should be replaced by the new philosophy about ‘Energy and Organization’ (p. 447).

These interdisciplinary studies therefore provide insightful reflections on the connotations of ‘crossing borders’ between nations, religions, and cultures as revealed by the works and anecdotes of Sinologists. ‘Translation’ itself is a result of cultural difference but, at the same time, it contains the potential for mutual understanding, communication, and collaboration, as T. H. Barrett suggests: ‘translation is shaped by culture, but it can shape culture, too’ (p. xlii).