How are translators embedded? Textual and peritextual analysis of Li Yü’s Twelve Towers in the nineteenth century

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article seeks to employ embeddedness theory – focusing on how human activities are embedded in society and institutions – as a theoretical and methodological groundwork for a view of translation as social practice. This aim is pursued through a case study of the translations of Chinese scholar Li Yü’s collection of novellas, Twelve Towers (Shi’er lou), in nineteenth-century Britain, produced by Sir John Francis Davis, Samuel Birch, and Robert Kennaway Douglas. The study finds that embeddedness theory provides a hermeneutic stance for understanding translation practice, and that peritextual analysis can complement embeddedness theory descriptively. Prospects for future collaboration of embeddedness theory and translation studies are promising, and a more profound analysis of the intersection of the two disciplines will foster exciting discoveries and stimulate mutually beneficial developments.