Prof. BAI Yunfei

Biographical Note

Yunfei Bai received his Ph.D. in French at Rutgers University. A native of Sichuan, China, he is also fluent in French, Spanish, Tibetan (Ü-Tsang dialect) and has worked extensively on primary sources written in these languages.

In his first book Rewriting the Orient: Asian Works in the Making of World Literature (NCSRLL/University of North Carolina Press, 2024), Yunfei delves into the creative adaptations of classical Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan literary texts by four renowned nineteenth- and early twentieth-century authors in France and Argentina: Théophile Gautier, Stéphane Mallarmé, Victor Segalen, and Jorge Luis Borges. Without any knowledge of the source languages, the authors crafted their own French and Spanish retellings based on received translations of these Asian works. Rewriting the Orient not only explores the so far untapped translation-rewriting continuum to trace the pivotal role of Orientalism in the formation of a singular corpus of world literature that goes beyond the Anglophone canon, but also sheds light on a wide range of innovative discursive strategies that readily challenge traditional notions of cultural appropriation.  Yunfei is currently working on his second book project tentatively titled Interpreters at the Dawn of Global Buddhism. Drawing on previously unstudied primary sources in Tibetan, Chinese, French, and English, this book aims to reconstruct four singular interfaith encounters between Chinese/Tibetan Buddhists, Daoists, and Westerners that took place in various Asian localities in the first half of the twentieth century. These encounters—involving a cacophony of voices—were arguably part and parcel of Buddhism’s emergence as a world religion. Through rigorous archival research and textual scholarship, Yunfei wishes to cast fresh light on the ingenious interpreters who played a pivotal role in these interreligious encounters. In so doing, he seeks to rethink two fundamental premises of translation theory: interpreters’ lack of agency and their assumed invisibility.

While he is not teaching, Yunfei enjoys swimming in the ocean and backpacking around the world, notably in South Asia and Latin America. He is adamantly passionate about learning languages through immersive sojourns and meaningful conversations with local people.

Before joining Lingnan University, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, from 2019 to 2022.

Research Interests

• Indirect Translation
• History of Interpreting
• Censorship in Translation
• French Literature
• Tibetan Literature
• Latin American Literature
• World Literature beyond the Anglophone Canon

BOOKS

• Bai, Yunfei. Rewriting the Orient: Asian Works in the Making of World Literature, (Chapel Hill: NCSRLL/University of North Carolina Press, 2024).

Articles

• Bai, Yunfei. “Untranslated World Literature: The Chinese Novels of César Aira,” Translation Studies 16, no.1 (2023): 33-47.
• Bai, Yunfei. “Civilisés ou barbares? Chinois et Tartares à l’époque des Lumières,” French Forum 45, no. 1 (2020): 1-15.
• Bai, Yunfei. “Victor Segalen’s 1914 Archeological Mission in Sichuan: The Untold Story,” French Cultural Studies 31, no. 3 (2020): 210-229.
• Bai, Yunfei. “Where Théophile Gautier Meets Li Yu: Mining Divergence and Common Ground from the ‘Heying lou’ to ‘Le Pavillon sur l’eau,’” Comparative Literature Studies 57, no. 1 (2020): 148-174.
• Bai, Yunfei. “World Literature and Nationalism: Tibetan Translations of Alphonse Daudet’s Short Story ‘La dernière classe,’” Archiv orientální 87, no. 3 (2019): 509-535
• Bai, Yunfei. “Is it possible to write a ‘Tibetan’ poem in French? Tentative reflections on Victor Segalen’s Thibet,” Revue d’ Études Tibétaines 42 (2017): 181-216.
• Bai, Yunfei. “The Writing of the Unwritten and the Translation of the Untranslatable: Alexandra David-Néel’s Reception in China,” Comparative Literature Studies 54, no. 2 (2017): 406-430. 
• Bai, Yunfei. “Divinité profanée ou laïcité sacralisée? Pour une lecture critique de la traduction d’Alexandra David-Néel d’un poème attribué au sixième dalaï-lama Tsangyang Gyatso,” in Des mots aux actes. 2017, n° 6—Traduire le Sacré, ed. Florence Lautel-Ribstein (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017), 289-298. 
• Bai, Yunfei. “The Reception of Victor Segalen in China: between Literature and Ideology,” China Perspectives, vol.1 (March 2016): 59-63.

Academic Book Reviews

• Bai, Yunfei. “A review of: Shuangyi Li, Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics: Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age,” Recherche littéraire / Literary Research 38 (2022): 295-298.
• Bai, Yunfei. “A review of: Fabienne Jagou, Gongga Laoren (1903–1997): Her Role in the Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan,” Journal Asiatique 310, no.1 (2022): 148-150.
• 柏云飛. “莊士敦的文化苦旅：中譯本《從北京到曼德勒：末代帝師中國西南紀行》評述,” Translation Quarterly 翻譯季刊 99 (2021): 101-108.
• 柏云飞. “评中译本《谢阁兰中国书简》,” 国际汉学 29, no. 4 (2021): 188-194.
• Bai, Yunfei. “A review of: B. Venkat Mani, Recoding World Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany’s Pact with Books,” Symplokē: Blue Humanities 27, no. 1-2 (2019): 520-524.
• Bai, Yunfei. “A review of: Nicolas Tournadre, Le Prisme des Langues, Essai sur la diversité linguistique et les difficultés des langues,” Revue d’Études Tibétaines 36 (2016): 251-258.

Translations:

• With Luc Thominette. La majorité silencieuse et autres essais de Wang Xiaobo 王小波杂文选 (Paris: Librairie You Feng, 2013).

Invited Talks and Conference Presentations

• “A Sino-Tibetan-Western Interfaith Dialogue at Mount Gongga 貢嘎山 in Western Sichuan in the Summer of 1945,” Center for Translation, Hong Kong Baptist University, September, 2021.
• “Cantonese Pirates in World Literature: the Legend of Ching I Sao (Cheung Po Tsai’s stepmother/wife) according to Jorge Luis Borges,” School of Chinese, University of Hong Kong, May 2021.
• “Lost in Translation? The French and American Afterlives of Padmasambhava’s Hagiography,” Centre of Buddhist Studies, University of Hong Kong, November 2020.
• “La Chine et la Tartarie en tant que cas de figure chez Voltaire et Rousseau,” The International colloquial on “Reorienting Cultural Flows: Engagements Between France and East/Southeast Asia,” Florida State University, February 2015.
• “Spécialisation, d’une culture à l’autre : Réduction ou élargissement?” at “LITTÉRAIRES : de quoi sommes-nous les « spécialistes »? ” Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, June 2014.