CFP: Inter-Asian Translations of Early Modern Writings in Plain Chinese (abstract by November 15, 2018)
A Special Issue for Frontiers of Literary Studies in China
Co-edited by Li Guo and Patricia Sieber
This special issue brings together translation studies, the history of the book, and the history of Chinese vernacular texts as world literature in dynastic East Asia. We seek to address translation as a multivalent and rich continuum, including activities of annotation, adaptation, rewriting, and transcreation, within dynastic China as well as in premodern Asian countries engaged in dynamic and complex dialogues with Chinese textual traditions. We also seek to address the circulation and receptions of such translations as well as reflections on methodologies of translation for such textual practices more generally. The special issue invites articles that negotiate and explore the dynamic and nuanced differences and spaces of innovative interpretations created through shifting discursive structures, linguistic and social registers, reconfigurations of the hierarchies of annotation, original text, and paratexts, as well as contextualization through translations of voice, gendered statements, paratextual materials and thematic expressions. We welcome contributions on how translations of early modern narratives reconfigured genre characteristics and linguistic perceptions of Chinese vernacular narratives, and how such adaptations through translation inspired new generic expressions in other Asian languages. We want to explore how translations of early modern vernacular texts provide insights on cross-cultural literary contact and shape social and cultural impacts with early modern East Asia, and how early modern translators re-envision and construct non-native readerships through annotation, supplementation, and innovation.
The special issue invites articles that address topics related to the following thematic questions. How does the act of translation change and enrich our understandings of vernacular authorship in Chinese and other Asian languages? How do early modern translation theories rework and re-conceptualize East Asian translation discourses? Could vernacular translations of early modern Chinese writings into Mongolian, Manchu, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, or other Asian languages activate new understandings of translation as adaptation? Do the translations and circulations of early modern vernacular narratives from Chinese into other Asian languages create new spaces of dialogism and polyphonic exchanges, or do translations construct and reify a unified image of Chinese empire of “all under heaven”? What nascent geopolitical understandings of gender, racial formation, and nation could the process of translation produce? What fresh perceptions, values, and inspirations could early modern theoretical explorations of inter-Asian translations yield for modern and contemporary readers, as well as for translation specialists? How do translations impact cross-cultural publication? What intellectual debates have been stimulated by early modern Asian translation cultures? Could translation encourage the channeling of knowledge among marginalized groups beyond canonical traditions? With these questions in mind, contributors of this special issue make collectively seek to contextualize translation practice in early modern Asia, and reconsider translation, self-translation, pseudo-translation as well as second-hand translation and retranslation with their specific historicity. Ultimately, this special issue inquires to what extent vernacular translations, rather than being merely isolated products of discreet social and cultural interactions, could generate innovative power dynamics among diverse readers’ communities in early modern Asia.
Please send abstracts of 500 words by November 15, 2018 to both guest editors, Patricia Sieber (sieber.6@osu.edu) and Li Guo (li.guo@usu.edu), as well as FLSC managing editor Chun Zhang (flora.zc@hotmail.com). Authors with selected abstracts will be invited to submit full manuscripts (8000 words, double-space) by May 15, 2019 for consideration of inclusion in FLSC in Spring 2020.