Biographical Note
I have been studying the translation, dissemination, and reception of classical Chinese literary and philosophical texts and more generally the writing of China in the West. My Ph.D. thesis, “New Poetry and Old Cathay: Translational Sinography in the Early Twentieth-Century English Literary World”, looks into the culture of reading, translating, and publishing classical Chinese poetry. It explores the mediating and constructive roles of translation (broadly construed) in the formation of knowledge about Chinese literature by focusing on an unconventional segment of the field – poet-translators who incorporate Chinese poetry into the transcultural imaginary of literary modernism, and peripheral modes of translation like indirect (re)translation, imitative translation, and pseudotranslation. I am now examining the diverse networks of translators and forms of transtextual practices in the field, working towards a thick description of translational sinography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Research InterestS
- Literary Translation
- Sinology
- Ideas/modes of translation across ages and cultures
- The translation and reception of classical Chinese literature
- The social and cultural history of writing China in the West
Publications
- “Making It Old, Making It New, Making It Chinese: Transcultural Imitation and the Palimpsest of Translation in Pound’s Cathay”. Translation and Literature, 32:3, 2023, 300-328. https://doi.org/10.3366/tal.2023.0560
- “Sinological Positioning: The Giles-Waley Debate and the Inception of Arthur Waley’s Chinese Translations”. In History Retold: Premodern Chinese Texts in Western Translation, edited by Leo Tak-hung Chan and Zong-qi Cai, Leiden: Brill, 2022, 121-153. https://brill.com/display/book/9789004521322/BP000005.xml
- “Reclaiming China’s Past: Sino-Babylonian Theory and the Translator’s (In)visibility in Clement Allen’s The Book of Chinese Poetry”. The Translator, 24:3, 2018.
- “The Interplay between Poetry and Translation in the Victorian Literary World”. (Review of Annmarie Drury, Translation as Transformation in Victorian Poetry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Translation Quarterly, 85, 2017.
- “Two Translations of Ji Yun’s Close Scrutiny: the Translator, the Reader, and the Settings of Translation”. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 10:1, 2017.
Conference Presentations
- “Chinese Poetry in the Borderlands of English Translation Anthologies”, A Space for Translation: Thresholds of Interpretation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 10-12 December, 2018.
- “Sino-Babylonianism, The Book of Chinese Poetry, and the Mobility of the Chinese Sign”, IATIS 6th International Conference, Hong Kong Baptist University, 3-6 July, 2018.
- “The Constructive Networks of Translators, Publishers, and Reviewers in the Inception of Arthur Waley’s Chinese Translations”, The 2nd International Conference on Chinese Translation History, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 14-16 December, 2017.
- “The Dynamics between Academic and Literary Orientalisms: Conceptualizing Chinese Poetry through (Re)translation in Early Twentieth-Century English Literary World”, The 8th Asian Translation Traditions Conference, SOAS, University of London, 5-7 July, 2017.
- “Nostalgia, Literary Chinoiserie, and the Temporal Locality of Chinese Poetry in English Translations, 1902-1913”, Translation and Time: Exploring the Temporal Dimension of Cross-cultural Transfer, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 8-10 December, 2016.
- “Faint Songs and Sombre Thoughts: Arthur Waley’s Translations of Classical Chinese Poetry”, The 1st East Asian Translation Studies Conference, University of East Anglia, 19-20 June, 2014.