Year: 2009

State-sponsored translation in China, 1952-2003

bmwhite Leave a Comment

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Special Presentation:

State-sponsored translation in China, 1952-2003:

Practices, consequences, and implications for translation studies

Bonnie McDougall

Emeritus Professor of Chinese, The University of Edinburgh

April 3, 3:30pm
Social Science 224 (John Hope Franklin Room)

Abstract

Translation Studies (TS) tends to take for granted certain generalized notions of transactions between authors and translators, with publishers variously active or passive in commissioning or accepting manuscripts. The Foreign Languages Press in Beijing in the period 1952-2003 operated on a significantly different model, casting doubt on the validity of basic TS concepts such as source-oriented v. reader-oriented translation. Translation by FLP staff was mostly into non-native languages; editorial staff had little or no knowledge of foreign cultures; little or no feedback from readers was sought or entertained; accuracy was prized but creativity was not. TS theories need to be adjusted to account for this and other examples of non-commercial transactions. In this talk I will focus on literary translation at the FLP in Beijing in the 1980s, based on personal experiences and observations; it describes an episode in Chinese literary history that poses challenges to contemporary translation theory.

Bonnie S. McDougall

Bonnie S. McDougall is Advisory Editor of Renditions, Research Centre for Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Born in Sydney, she first studied Chinese at Peking University (1958-59). Academic appointments include teaching and research at Sydney, SOAS, Harvard, Oslo and Edinburgh.

While a full-time translator at the Foreign Languages Press in the 1980s, she also translated poetry, fiction and film-scripts by new writers emerging through the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, among them Bei Dao, Ah Cheng, Chen Kaige, Gu Cheng, Qiu Xiaolong and Wang Anyi. Her other translations include poetry, fiction, drama and essays by Mao Zedong, Guo Moruo, He Qifang, Ye Shengtao, Yu Dafu, Ding Xilin and Zhu Guangqian, and Hong Kong fiction and poetry by Xi Xi, Dung Kai Cheung, Leung Ping-kwan and Ng Mei-kwan. She has taught literary translation at the College of Foreign Affairs in Beijing as well as in the UK and Hong Kong.

Recent books include Love-letters and Privacy in Modern China: The Intimate Lives of Lu Xun and Xu Guangping (Oxford, 2002) and Fictional Authors, Imaginary Audiences: Modern Chinese Literature in the Twentieth Century (Hong Kong, 2003). Further details are available here).

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact ktanaka@uchicago.edu

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please email Kathryn Tanaka at ktanaka@uchicago.edu or Tomoko Seto at tseto@uchicago.edu

Exploring the Philosophical and Historical Dimensions of Contemporary Japan by Tracing Three “Turns”

campus Leave a Comment

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Exploring the Philosophical and Historical Dimensions of

Contemporary Japan by Tracing Three “Turns”

A Special Presentation By:

Iwasaki Minoru

Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

“The ‘Memorial’ Turn in Contemporary Philosophy”

Narita Ryûichi

Japan Women’s University

“Spatial Turn and Temporal Turn in Contemporary Historical Studies.”

Monday, March 30

Social Sciences 302

4:30-6:30 PM

There is no paper for this talk. The talk will be in Japanese with English translation.

Abstract

Throughout the long latter half of the twentieth century, “Japan” took its actions and thought within the framework of the “postwar.” Today, however, this “postwar” has come to an end, and “Japan” has entered a “post-‘postwar’” condition. In our presentations, we will discuss “contemporary” Japan as the “post-‘postwar’” by exploring three “turns” in memory, time and space.

Iwasaki Minoru is Professor of philosophy and political thought at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He is the co-editor of 戦後日本スタディーズ3 – 80, 90年代 (Postwar Japan Studies 3: 1980-90s, 2008) and継続する植民地主義―ジェンダー/民族/人種/階級 (Continuing Colonialism: Gender, Nation, Race, and Class, 2005). His published articles include “歴史学における想起と忘却の問題系(“Problematique of Recollection and Oblivion in Historical Studies”, 2002), and “Desire for a Poietic Metasubject: Miki Kiyoshi’s Technology Theory” in Total War and “Modernization” (Yamanouchi Yasushi, J. Victor Koschmann and Narita Ryûichi eds., Cornell UP, 1998).

Narita Ryûichi is Professor of modern Japanese history at Japan Women’s University. He is the author of大正デモクラシー (Taisho Democracy, 2007), 歴史学のポジショナリティ―歴史叙述とその周辺 (Positionality of Historical Studies – Historical Narratives and their Surroundings, 2006), “歴史”はいかに語られるか―1930年代「国民の物語」批判 (In What Way “History” is Narrated: Criticism of “National Narratives” in the 1930s, 2001), and「故郷」という物語―都市空間の歴史学 (Narratives of “Native Place”: Historical Studies of Urban Space,1998), and the co-editor of Total War and “Modernization” (Cornell UP, 1998).

Issues in Conceptualizing Japanese Garden Art

campus Leave a Comment

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Issues in Conceptualizing Japanese Garden Art

Camelia Nakagawara

Ph. D Candidate

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by

Brian Bergstrom, Ph.D student, EALC

Friday, March 6
4:00-6:00 p.m.

Judd 313

There is no paper for this workshop.

Abstract:

For many centuries, “Japanese gardens” have been both a source of fascination and an object of mystification for Japanese and non-Japanese alike. Partly by overemphasizing certain themes or aspects, partly by overlooking others, images of Japanese gardens can alter our perception of their materiality. How are gardens transformed by their representations in the media? What is lost in those representations and what is created as a result? How are gardens drawn in a dialogue with political agendas, and what are the factors or features that make such a dialogue lucrative? This presentation will provide some examples that attempt to address such questions and initiate a critical approach departing from current literature on Japanese gardens.


If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact ktanaka@uchicago.edu

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please email Kathryn Tanaka at ktanaka@uchicago.edu or Tomoko Seto at tseto@uchicago.edu

From Daoist Immortality to Revolutionary Morality

campus Leave a Comment

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop Presents:

From Daoist Immortality to Revolutionary Morality:
Transforming the Immortal Hirsute Maiden into
the White Haired Girl
 

Max Bohnenkamp

Ph.D. Candidate , Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by Kwok-wai Hui, Ph.D student, History

Friday, February 27

4-6 p.m.

Judd 313

The White Haired Girl (Bai mao nü) has stood out over the years as one of the most successful creations of Chinese
revolutionary aesthetics since its inception as a musical theater piece in the Communist headquarters of Yan'an 
during the 1940s. While the story of the White Haired Girl is often claimed to originate from a folktale discovered 
by wartime culture workers in Hebei province, the details of its provenance have always remained vague. This 
paper examines the previously undiscovered relationship between the White Haired Girl and a tale from traditional 
folklore- the "Immortal Hairy Maiden" (Maonü xiangu). First mentioned in the 3rd century Biographies of Immortals 
(Liexian zhuan), the story tells how a female retainer of the Qin court escaped the fate of burial alongside the First 
Emperor by fleeing to the mountains, where she survived on sparse flora, learned the secrets of Daoist immortality, 
and uncannily sprouted fur all over her body. 
This paper explores the significance the Immortal Hairy Maiden and the White Haired Girl's similar straddling of the 
divide between human and non-human worlds, asking how the values of the traditional tale were commuted by the 
revolutionary one. Complicating recent interpretations of the latter as representing a sacrifice of gender subjectivity 
to revolutionary class-consciousness, I trace the figure's transformation from a traditional folk symbol of supernatural 
female metamorphosis and knowledge of immortality to a national icon of revolutionary subjectivity, domestic renewal, 
and the dispelling of superstition.  
If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact ktanaka@uchicago.edu

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please email Kathryn Tanaka at ktanaka@uchicago.edu or Tomoko Seto at tseto@uchicago.edu

From Parliamentary Speeches to Chinese Poetry

campus Leave a Comment

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop Presents:

From Parliamentary Speeches to Chinese Poetry:

The Privileged Space of Popular Rights Activist Kishida Toshiko’s Diaries (1891-1901)

Mamiko Suzuki

Ph.D. Candidate , Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Friday, February 6

4-6 p.m.

Judd 313 

Known as the first female orator of modern Japan, Kishida Toshiko (1864-1901) left behind a
decade's worth of diaries which spanned the years after her political activism and ran
concurrently with her shift in expressive mode from voice to pen. Kishida's turn toward the less
controversial medium of women's educational journals to express her ideas within the public
domain was a response to the increasingly restrictive world of the mid-Meiji period (1868-1901).
At the same time, Toshiko found in her diaries a unique and privileged space of self-expression
that helped her to construct an identity otherwise impermissible in her published writings.
In this talk, I will discuss the specific circumstances surrounding the posthumous publication in
1903 of the final two diaries (1900-1901) and how Kishida's formal language, audience, and
public persona in her remaining diaries complicate way we read Meiji women's writing. Kishida
also demonstrates also how the expressive space of the diary is communicating with, yet
functions outside the limitations of print media and other public platforms. The diary allowed
Kishida as a woman writer to multiply her narrative positions regardless of her legal subjugation
and social classification and to posthumously contribute an anomalous yet parallel discourse on
Meiji women.
 
Note:
No paper will be distributed in advance. The talk will be given at a research university for a
Languages and Literatures Department position.  We would appreciate comments and
questions to the talk, particularly from the position of a non-Japan or non-East Asian specialist.
 
If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact ktanaka@uchicago.edu

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please email Kathryn Tanaka at ktanaka@uchicago.edu or Tomoko Seto at tseto@uchicago.edu

Reconsidering Japanese education: encounters between children and teachers in prewar and wartime Japan

campus Leave a Comment

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Reconsidering Japanese education: 
encounters between children and teachers in 
prewar and wartime Japan

Mika Endo

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by

Yoon Sun Yang, Ph.D candidate, EALC

Friday, January 23
4:00-6:00 p.m.

Judd 313

Please click on the link above to download the paper.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact ktanaka@uchicago.edu

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please email Kathryn Tanaka at ktanaka@uchicago.edu or Tomoko Seto at tseto@uchicago.edu