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Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel
Abstract
Review by Andrew West of "Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel" (Moss Roberts trans.)
... Some of the early partial translations were published in academic journals, some inserted in research-oriented monographs, and some included in collections of fairy tales or plays. The two full-length translations are those by C. H. Brewitt-Taylor (first printed 1925) and Moss Roberts (1991). This book combines a textual analysis of the translations and a historical study on the environment in which the translations were produced. ...
... The present book deals only with translations into English. These began in the 1820s and comprise, apart from the full-length versions by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor (1925) and Moss Roberts (1991), around twenty-eight shorter extracts that appeared in periodicals or in monographs and textbooks. Brewitt-Taylor translated excerpts before he tackled the book as a whole, and Roberts produced different abbreviated versions both before and after his main translation. ...
... The full-text versions by C. H. Brewitt-Taylor and Moss Roberts are both based on the Mao edition. A difference worth noting is that Roberts's (1991) translation, in the translator's words, "affords the reader some opportunity for comparing the TS and the Mao edition by translating in the notes many passages from the TS that were omitted or adapted in the later texts" (Roberts, 1991: 939). Also, Roberts's version contains more historical information by adding notes to figures, hierarchy or allusions to Han dynasty. ...
... He was probably born between 1315 and 1318 and was still alive in 1364. One source suggests that he was involved in anti-Yuan rebellions in south China but retired to write an unofficial history (Roberts 1995). Although Luo is given as the author, he could not have written the version of the Romance that we have today. ...
... The earliest extant version of the Romance is prefaced 1494 and the earliest edition is dated 1522. However, modern versions are based on the Mao edition that appeared in the mid-1660s (Roberts 1995). Consequently, the Romance must be considered a product of the Ming Dynasty that is based on earlier historical and popular works that may include one by Luo. ...
... In this story the old men are clearly the kind of immortals that impart knowledge to true seekers in many Daoist inspired stories. The Romance opens with a very similar story of how the leader of the Daoist inspired Yellow Headband rebel movement, Zhang Jue 張角, received the revelatory scripture the Tai Ping Jing 太平經 (Great Peace Classic) (Roberts 1995). ...
Both Hua Tuo 華佗 and Zhang Zhong-Jing lived at the end of the Later or Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD). While the life of Zhang remains obscure we have received his writings in the form of the Shang Han Lun. In the case of Hua Tuo, we have numerous stories of his life but his writings appear to have all been lost. Despite the paucity of information on Zhang few dispute his historical existence, however some scholars view Hua Tuo as a mythical figure based on legends imported from India concerning the ancient Indian doctor Jivaka (see Unschuld 1985 p 151). Certainly Hua Tuo is surrounded by a mass of stories, some of which appear to be of an apocryphal or allegorical nature. However, other stories concerning his life and medical exploits do not appear to be of this type. The purpose of this article is to examine the stories that surround Hua Tuo and to evaluate them in terms of what they tell us about Hua Tuo and about ancient medicine in China.
... B-T's translation must have been available at the time when Roberts was teaching Chinese in the US. Roberts (1994) mentioned in the acknowledgements of his complete translation that he had read B-T's translation: ...
... The current study is based on two translations of SanguoYanyi, namely Brewitt-Taylor's (2002) translation entitled Romance of the Three Kingdoms,and Roberts' (1994) translation entitled Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel.Brewitt-Taylor's translation was first published by Kelly & Walsh Limited in Shanghai in 1925 as two hardcover volumes. In 1929, the text was reprinted by the same publisher as a popular edition to enable more readers to afford a copy. ...
This article aims to review the theoretical assumptions of the phenomenon of retranslation, and
to test some of these assumptions by studying the data collected from three sample chapters
taken from the two complete English translations of Sanguo Yanyi – the first Chinese novel.
Firstly, the three suggested denotations of the concept of ‘retranslation’ are identified and
clarified. Secondly, the assumptions of retranslation are described, i.e. the necessity for
retranslation, motives for retranslation, and the relation between the first translation and the
retranslation of the same source text. Thirdly, the data from the sample chapters are analysed
to test these assumptions. The general macro-structural features and some of the microstructural
features of the two translations are studied and compared. Lastly, a conclusion from
the findings is drawn as the verification of the assumptions of the retranslation. The hypotheses
of retranslation are also briefly discussed.
... The alignment of the emperor's psychological health, the atmospheric condition, and the (impending) chaos of the state are clear. Subsequently, other " evil portents " (Roberts, 1999, 4) appear, reminiscent not only of King Lear, but of the anomalies of nature that precede political assassination and civil war in Julius Caesar ( " a tempest dropping fire [I.iii.10], " the bird of night . . ...
Available at http://www.aber.ac.uk/cla/archive/hoganhtml#_edn6.
Paratext is an inseparable part of translation. It can reveal what the translated text cannot explain and is of great significance to translation studies. This article uses the English translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms by American Sinologist Moss Roberts as the research object, and attempts to interpret Roberts’ translation views and translation promotional factors through peritext, such as the cover, acknowledgments, annotations and postscripts, and epitext, such as interviews, reviews and other external paratexts. It is found that Roberts’ translation motivation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is mainly to spread Chinese culture by literature. He always keeps readers in his heart and has a strong reader consciousness. Therefore, he mainly adopts domestication strategies and uses a lot of annotations to make the readers better understand the meaning and Chinese culture. Secondly, the author found that the translator’s own erudite and rigorous attitude, the cooperation of Chinese and foreign publishing houses, and the evaluation of well-known sinologists all promoted the spread and acceptance of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This study interprets Roberts’ translation view and the promotional factors of the translation from the paratext, hoping to help comprehensively and objectively evaluate the value of Roberts’ translation, and at the same time promote the in-depth and development of translation studies from the perspective of the paratext.
The Qiang ethnic minority had a population of around 300,000 at the time of the earthquake. The Qiang mostly inhabit the poorest and most socially disadvantaged remote rural mountainous areas of the Wen Chuan and Mao Wen Qiang Autonomous Counties of Sichuan. The Qiang have a continuous cultural history dating from the Diqiang groups of the Xia Dynasty (16th to 11th century BC). They have their own language and animistic belief system, and have developed their own traditional ways of dealing with disasters. The Qiang’s myth of “Bubita” (God) and the legend of “Mutazhu and Douanzhu” (a heroic story) are key messages in understanding disasters; the village “Duyaomao” (poisonous cat, meaning witch) is important for explaining children’s illness and health. The rites conducted by the Shibi (cultural leader) are the core activity in advocating collective action for responding to disaster. To reach out quickly to children who have been affected by their traumatic experiences, many volunteers have given their assistance, including doctors, psychologists, counselling staff and social workers. In particular, a large-scale program of psychiatric counselling/therapies administered by the government is being carried out. However, employing psychological counselling and psychiatric therapies from the western individualistic perspective has led to a dilemma for public health based on medical/psychological agendas. Widespread evidence has also shown that there is a very limited effect from outside community visitors, whose one-off, inconsistent, non-indigenous messages do not carry over into the children’s everyday lives. The need for an indigenous approach is stressed.
em>Sanguo Yanyi , an eminent and impactful ancient historical novel, has achieved considerable recognition and holds perpetual allure. Currently, there exist three English translations of Sanguo Yanyi, originating from different historical periods. In this paper, we focus on the character image of Liu Bei, employing it as a case study to analyze and compare the translation methods employed in these three translations. The aim is to scrutinize the translation strategies that effectively convey the portrayal of character images.
Most baojuan (precious scrolls), predominantly religious-oriented prosimetric texts in the vernacular language, in the late period of their development (late 19th–early 20th centuries) lost connection with heterodox religious teachings. Notwithstanding this several newly emerged religious traditions in the 19th century continued to use the baojuan form to propagate their teachings. This paper analyses specific religious ideas in the Complete Recension of the Scroll of Mulian , first printed in Hangzhou in 1877. This text still has not been translated into any foreign language and is rarely discussed in research work, although it is considerably different from the more widespread recensions of this baojuan . The Complete Recension includes many additional entertaining episodes from the voluminous Mulian dramas of southern China. We can also find ideas of syncretic religious teachings, including references to the inner alchemy technique, which is especially characteristic of the Former Heaven Religion (Xiantiandao) groups. I also compare this text with other recensions of the Mulian Baojuan still recited in China in order to demonstrate the interplay of various beliefs and practices in the late baojuan texts.
Studying video game localisation from a translation perspective is an approach that has been gaining impetus since the early 2010s, with a number of studies focusing on aspects such as translation strategies or cultural adaptation. This article examines video game localisation as ‘homecoming’ in the game Total War: Three Kingdoms by comparing the differences between the text assets in the English and Chinese versions of the game, as well as the original Chinese novel San Guo Yan Yi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and related Chinese works. The article examines the hidden indirectness in this localisation in relation to four aspects: the number of languages involved, the complexity of the mediating texts, the participants, and the medium and multimodality of the game. It also emphasises the need to extend the traditional understanding of indirect translation to include the localisation of video games adapted from classic works.
This study offers a new approach for studying biblical myth in two directions: first, by expanding the scope of investigation beyond the clearly mythological elements to other areas of biblical literature, and second, by drawing comparisons to classical Chinese literature. This article thus reconsiders the relationship between myth and history in both biblical and Chinese literature, while seeking to broaden the endeavor of the comparative method in biblical studies. Two examples are offered: (1) the story of Moses’s call narrative and his relationship with Aaron in Exodus in light of the story of Xiang Liang and Xiang Ji in the Shiji; (2) the story of Saul and David in 1 Samuel compared with the story of Dong Zhuo and Lü Bu in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Both comparisons demonstrate the operation of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s inversion principle. Conclusions regarding each of these literatures are presented separately, followed by cross-cultural insights and shared aspects in the study of myth, historiography, and religion.
This paper identifies a number of parallels drawn by translators and critics between the classic Chinese narrative San guo yan yi and related western literary works and traditions, with particular focus on three aspects: genre, character and plot. The paper discusses a number of full and partial English translations of the text, including two full-text translations by C. H. Brewitt-Taylor and two excerpted translations by Hawks Pott and Carl Arendt, as well as several other translators who attempted to bring the book to a western readership. Using comparisons with western literature made by these translators, the paper addresses the following questions: What happens when a text of this sort is translated into a language like English? Where does it fit in the western genre system? What similarities, according to the translators, can be identified between San guo yan yi and related western literary works? This paper argues that the translators’ commentaries suggest that they were not familiar with the specific modes of characterization and narration of classic Chinese novels, and therefore failed to identify the stylistic features of San guo yan yi as those belonging to the genre of zhanghuiti. From the perspective of comparative literature, the book can be categorized as an example of a relatively new form—the ensemble historical narrative—that combines both Chinese and western literary traditions. The discussions in this paper not only allow us to extend the scope of genre theory, but also contribute to a better understanding of Chinese literature overall.
As one of the Early Four Historiographies, Fan Ye’s Book of the Later Han preserves significant works of both historical and literary value. This is something increasingly significant in response to the dynamic growth in popularity of classical Chinese texts among Western sinologists. Through reading the English translation of the “Biography of Huan Tan and Feng Yan” from the Book of the Later Han, the following
three issues are arguably noteworthy for the translator’s consideration. Firstly, the English translation may involve an
interim step of intralingual translation from classical Chinese to modern Chinese, before a subsequent interlingual translation from modern Chinese to English. While this facilitates the process of translation,
the vernacular translation also involves further risks in misinterpretation. Secondly, translation of such historiographical work which consists of literary works by various writers with numerous historical references,
not only requires the translator to conduct additional analysis and write explanatory notes, it also makes the English output inaccessible to most readers. Thirdly,
the highly interdisciplinary knowledge in relevant historiography not only demands a high quality of competency in translators, but also arguably acts as a catalyst for further academic research in the process of close reading and research. This paper intends to analyse the above three issues through a case study on the “Biography of Huan Tan and Feng Yan”, thereby demonstrating how the translation of Chinese classics is an
arduous yet meaningful challenge.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Interpretation vier ausgewählter Filme des Filmemachers Ang Lee – Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Brokeback Mountain und Hulk, die in den Jahren 1992 bis 2005 entstanden. Sie erforscht die unterschiedliche Inszenierung von Konzepten der Männlichkeit im chinesischen und US-amerikanischen Kontext, sowie den Männlichkeitsdiskurs in Räumen des kulturellen Üergangs. Die Untersuchung Lees männlicher Figuren und Männlichkeitskonzepte macht sich sowohl die chinesische als auch die westliche erkenntnistheoretische Perspektive zu eigen, dabei ist Untersuchung sowohl konzeptionell als auch analytisch angelegt. Auf der konzeptionellen Ebene soll sie zeigen, wie sich die Konstruktion von Männlichkeitskonzepten unter der Einbeziehung nicht nur der westlichen konzeptionellen Argumentation von transkulturellen Räumen (Transdifferenz), sondern auch von andersartigen erkenntnistheoretischen Perspektiven, hier der chinesischen, besser erklären lässt. Auf der analytischen Ebene werden in der Untersuchung der Inszenierung männlicher Figuren audio-visuelle Textanalysen benutzt. Die Analyse hat deutlich die Komplexität und Vielfältigkeit der Aushandlung von Männlichkeitskonzepten in transkulturellen Räumen gezeigt, wobei die Rekonstruktion und die Neuverhandlung von Männlichkeit sowohl emanzipatorisch als auch repressiv von statten gehen kann. Männliche Protagonisten bei Lee finden drei unterschiedliche Wege, ihre männliche Identität zu konstruieren. Als erste Lösung unterdrücken sie den transdifferenten Aspekt und wählen die klare Zugehörigkeit zu einer der Kulturen, die dann als Ursprung für die Restauration der Männlichkeit dient. Die zweite Lösung ist das Annehmen der Transdifferenz um eine mehrdeutige maskuline Identität im transkulturellen Raum aufzubauen. Als letzte Lösung gelingt es einen männlichen Figuren, kulturelle Grenzen zu überschreiten und eine transkulturelle Männlichkeit zu manifestieren.
This is a study of the Sanguo yanyi (hereafter Yanyi), one of the four great literary classics of China, in terms of its political standpoint, character evaluation, and character development. It questions the traditional views related to Yanyi’s stance of revering Liu Bei 劉備 and belittling Cao Cao 曹操. The argument here is that the novel's political standpoint is mainly based on zhongyi 忠義 (loyalty and righteousness), rather than lineage, benevolence, and other factors. Although Yanyi has a clear political position, it is relatively objective and neutral in evaluating historical figures from different camps. The character development of Yanyi is very successful. The character images are round and rich, rather than flat and stereotypical. Both positive and negative characters have their merits and weaknesses.
eprint link of the article:
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/9fFJZcIwz5Qv8EkiUseN/full
A series of translators have made the Chinese traditional novel Sanguozhi Yanyi accessible to English readers in the nineteenth century. They invariably labeled this fourteenth-century text that rooted in public entertainment as a historical romance, neglecting the specific characteristics of its original genre “yanyi” and the cultural nuances between these two genres. This paper gives a comprehensive analysis of their translation practices and demonstrates the implicit motivation behind this seemingly unconscious mistranslation. It argues the translators were inspired by the emergence and popularity of historical romance in Britain at the time and saw the advantages of this novel genre in spreading knowledge among average readers and rivaling non-fictional writings in terms of affecting the public opinion. Although they were keen on competing with the travelog writers in representing the authentic China, as a result, however, their translated romance actually validated the existing misunderstanding and stereotypes of China.
Boolean games are a succinct representation of strategic games wherein a player seeks to satisfy a formula of propositional logic by selecting a truth assignment to a set of propositional variables under his control. The framework has proven popular within the multiagent community, however, almost invariably, the work to date has been restricted to the case of pure strategies. Such a focus is highly restrictive as the notion of randomised play is fundamental to the theory of strategic games -- even very simple games can fail to have pure-strategy equilibria, but every finite game has at least one equilibrium in mixed strategies. To address this, the present work focuses on the complexity of algorithmic problems dealing with mixed strategies in Boolean games. The main result is that the problem of determining whether a two-player game has an equilibrium satisfying a given payoff constraint is NEXP-complete. Based on this result, we then demonstrate that a number of other decision problems, such as the uniqueness of an equilibrium or the satisfaction of a given formula in equilibrium, are either NEXP or coNEXP-complete. The proof techniques developed in the course of this are then used to show that the problem of deciding whether a given profile is in equilibrium is coNP^#P-hard, and the problem of deciding whether a Boolean game has a rational-valued equilibrium is NEXP-hard, and whether a two-player Boolean game has an irrational-valued equilibrium is NEXP-complete. Finally, we show that determining whether the value of a two-player zero-sum game exceeds a given threshold is EXP-complete.
Chinese cinema continues to go from strength to strength. After art-house hits like Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984) and Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000), the Oscar-winning success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000) disproved the old myth that subtitled films could not succeed at the multiplex. Chinese Films in Focus II updates and expands the original Chinese Films in Focus: 25 New Takes with fourteen brand new essays, to offer thirty-four fresh and insightful readings of key individual films. The new edition addresses films from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other parts of the Chinese diaspora and the historical coverage ranges from the 1930s to the present.
The essays, by leading authorities on Chinese cinema as well as up-and-coming scholars, are concise, accessible, rich, and on the cutting edge of current research. Each contributor outlines existing writing and presents an original perspective on the film, making this volume a rich resource for classroom use, scholarly research and general reading for anyone wanting to understand more about the historical development and rich variety of Chinese cinema.
Contributors: Annette Aw, Chris Berry, Yomi Braester, Felicia Chan, Esther Cheung, Robert Chi, Rey Chow, Mary Farquhar, Carolyn FitzGerald, Ping Fu, Kristine Harris, Margaret Hillenbrand, Brian Hu, Tan See Kam, Haiyan Lee, Vivian Lee, Helen Hok-Sze Leung, David Leiwei Li, Song Hwee Lim, Kam Louie, Fran Martin, Jason McGrath, Corrado Neri, Jonathan Noble, Beremoce Reynaud, Cui Shuqin, Julian Stringer, Janice Tong, Yiman Wang, Faye Hui Xiao, Gang Gary Xu, Audrey Yue, Yingjin Zhang, John Zou
The Editor: Chris Berry is Professor of Film and Television at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In the available histories of Chinese literature today, early and mid-Ming literature has been largely ignored. This problem is partly due to our obsession with the late Ming (i.e. 1550–1644), which has led us to ignore some equally important, if not more important, literary phenomena occurring before 1550. In fact, many of the important trends that have been associated with the late Ming actually find their origins much earlier. For example, it was during the early Ming – especially the Yongle reign (1403–1424) – that literature began to flourish in the court, when scholar–officials considered themselves to be somewhat like European courtiers.. For the sake of convenience, the literature of the early and middle Ming can be divided roughly into three periods: 1375 to 1450, 1450 to 1520, and 1520 to 1572. The beginning of the first period was far from being a cultural revival. Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, was suspicious to the point of paranoia, and was completely unpredictable in his responses to poetry. His persecution of authors whom he believed to have secretly criticized him was often brutal. Once a poor peasant and a local leader during the Red Turban revolt, the emperor assumed that the cultural elite would despise him; thus, reading between the lines for evidence of disloyalty, he brought death or banishment upon countless literary men. Given his persecution of writers and artists, it is ironic that among the past emperors of imperial China, Zhu Yuanzhang is the one whose portraits have been best preserved. At present, twelve portraits of Zhu are kept in the Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, and one is in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
86 Christopher P. Atwood Late Imperial China Vol. 21, No. 2 (December 2000): 86–139 © by the Society for Qing Studies 86 “WORSHIPING GRACE”: THE LANGUAGE OF LOYALTY IN QING MONGOLIA Christopher P. Atwood The link between the Chinese realm and the Inner Asian realm constitutes one of the most important points in understanding the nature of the Qing imperium. Past studies have highlighted how the institutions of rule in Mongolia, Tibet, and elsewhere in Inner Asia differed dramatically from those in the eighteen provinces of China. Ning Chia, for example, in her study of the Lifan Yuan or Court of Colonial Affairs, reiterated how that organization was the focus of government institutions that were unique in Chinese governmental history. She writes, “The Li-fan Yuan could not possibly exist if the sinocentric ‘exclusivist’ attitude had continued to dominate imperial policy . . . The Li-fan Yuan was thus a specifically Manchu creation, and a Manchu contribution to the historical development of the Chinese imperial system” (Chia 1992: 103–104). Institutional differences, particularly when those institutions are embedded in a thick cultural context, may also be expected to have correlates in the more affective elements of rule. Particularly in a system that is so profoundly centered on the person of the emperor, institutional differences would presumably also involve difference in the presentation of the person of the emperor to different publics among the different peoples of the empire. Here, too, previous research has strongly emphasized how the Qing emperors adopted dramatically different personas in order to appeal to each realm in the multinational Qing empire. Building on such materials, David Farquhar’s classic study of the Mañjus wedgesubscript rıincarnation idea in the image of the Qing monarchy stressed how the Qianlong emperor and his predecessors and successors had to appeal to the Mongols and Tibetans purely within the indigenous political practices, thus imposing a sort of political split personality on the monarchs who had to be both Chinese Confucian and Mongolian Buddhist at the same time. * I would like to thank Mark Elliot and the other participants at the International Symposium on NonChinese Sources for Late Imperial Chinese History at the University of California at Santa Barbara, March 18–20, 1998, György Kara, and the anonymous three reviewers for Late Imperial China for their numerous suggestions and corrections. 87“Worshiping Grace”: The Language of Loyalty in Qing Mongolia The Manchu rulers had early decided that . . . their most visible religio-political image was to be Chinese and Confucian . . . But the Ch’ing emperors were also the rulers of the Mongols, who . . . had very different notions about the proper image for their emperors; they expected them to be grand patrons of their religious establishments. . . . The two [imperial] personas were nevertheless consistently and successfully cultivated for nearly two hundred years (Farquhar 1978: 33–34). Angela Zito, drawing heavily on Farqhuar for her assessment of the Qing rulers’ relations with the Inner Asian peoples, states baldly that “the throne’s relations with its Mongolian and Tibetan subjects proceeded in the idiom of Buddhist practice.” After discussing how the imperial portraits gave a Buddhist reading of the imperial institution, she adds: “That the Chinese literati were notoriously unwilling to do so [that is, read the portraits in a Buddhist way] was not the emperor’s problem. He had other attitudes to model for them” (Zito 1997: 23). Evelyn Rawski in her social history of the Qing institutions concurs: “The Qing empire was founded on multiethnic coalitions and its rulers sought to perpetuate these alliances by addressing each of the constituent peoples that come under Qing rule in their own cultural vocabularies. . . .They courted the Han literati in the language of Confucianism and cast Manchu rulers as dharmar¯aja in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition” (Rawski 1998: 17). Pamela Crossley, accepting Joseph Fletcher’s model of a distinctive TurcoMongol kingship, goes on to say that “But in the case of the Qing, it is clear that while the khan became an emperor, he also remained a khan.” She writes that in the Qing empire “a single person, in a single era, embodied magisterial bureaucratic government, universal dominance inherited from the Mongolian great-khans, and the sagely...
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