From Margin to Mainstream: Retranslation of Early Chinese History

Abstract

This paper sets out to examine the diachronic movement of the three English versions of Zuozhuan 左傳 (Commentary of Zuo) by James Legge ([1872] 1991), Burton Watson (1989), and Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li, and David Schaberg (2016) with the time span of nearly one century and a half based on paratextual analysis. Zuozhuan , listed as one of the thirteen ‘Chinese canons,’ is the core Confucian narrative history recording the turbulent period in the pre-Qin dynasty between 722–468 BCE. The current literature often involves the examination of its narrative, key words interpretation, and comparative study with other historiographies; however, there has been little discussion about the English translations of the historical texts. Drawing on Lawrence Venuti’s retranslation theory, the present study explores the retranslation of Zuozhuan in terms of the translators’ agency, the intertextual relationship with the other historiographies, and the role of history. Our results indicate that Legge explores the comparative and the scholarly value from the Victorian moral standard and Protestant ideology. Watson, by contrast, places priority on its narrative feature in the late twentieth century. Durrant et al. highlight literariness and the scholarly and the pragmatic value at the start of the new millennium. The research reveals the translators’ endeavor to change the status of early Chinese history from periphery to centrality through literary features and easier accessibility while preserving the academic value. This research not only sheds new light on the cause and value of the retranslations but also investigates the application of the retranslation hypothesis on the newly-targeted data of the historical canon.