Abstract
Robert Morrison and William Milne regularly selected passages from the <i>Peking Gazette</i> and translated them into English in the English quarterly magazine <i>The Indo-Chinese Gleaner</i> (1817-1822) to help foreigners know about Chinese society. Subsequently, foreigners in China began systematic translation of the <i>Peking Gazette</i> so as to understand China’s actual conditions in the 19th century. In this essay, we studied <i>The Indo-Chinese Gleaner</i> from the perspective of the <i>Peking Gazette</i> extracts, as there has been no systematic and content-based research on <i>The Indo-Chinese Gleaner</i>. We found that there are pragmatic features in the English version of the <i>Peking Gazette</i> extracts in <i>The Indo-Chinese Gleaner</i>: standards in selecting the passages from the <i>Peking Gazette</i>, translation structures, unique translation strategies and techniques, cross-cultural comments and so on. English newspapers in China which imitate the example and model of <i>The Indo-Chinese Gleaner</i> in translation of the <i>Peking Gazette</i> include <i>The Chinese Repository</i>, <i>The Cycle</i>, <i>The China Mail</i>, <i>The Hong Kong Daily Press</i>, <i>The North China Herald</i> and <i>The North China Daily News</i>. Also, we explored the role of translation of the <i>Peking Gazette</i> in cultural communication and diplomacy in the 19th century, as well as the academic value of <i>The Indo-Chinese Gleaner</i> and its <i>Peking Gazette</i> extracts, so as to provide new ideas for the study of Sino-Foreign cultural exchanges and Chinese translation history throughout the 19th century.
Highlights
In the early 18th century, foreigners in China including Jesuits translated selective passages from the Peking Gazette into English
In the early and middle 19th century, Robert Morrison, Peter Parker, Ernest Box, John Robert Morrison and other missionaries in China translated and serialized the Peking Gazette in English newspapers including The Indo-Chinese Gleaner, The Canton Register, The Chinese Courier and Canton Gazette, The Canton Miscellany, Chinese Repository, and this enabled foreigners to know about the history and social conditions of China
According to the comment made by The Chinese Repository, “Had the Indo-chinese Gleaner been continued to this day, with its wonted ability and spirit, it would have contained a most valuable collection of information; even as it is, we know of no one work that will compare with it, on most subjects relative to China [3].”
Summary
In the early 18th century, foreigners in China including Jesuits translated selective passages from the Peking Gazette into English. As the first Protestant missionary in China, Morrison had selected and translated some texts in the Peking Gazette before starting The Indo-Chinese Gleaner He published his work Translations from the Original Chinese, with Notes in Guangzhou in 1815, mainly based on the Peking Gazette. For reporting the actual conditions of the Indo-Chinese nations, Morrison and Milne read, translated and analyzed the Peking Gazette in a systematic way, and published selective translations in Indo-Chinese Miscellanea and Indo-Chinese News of The Indo-Chinese Gleaner as extracts from the Peking Gazette Following this example, Western people started to translate and analyze the Peking Gazette texts in an organized way to understand China’s national conditions and introduce China’s social conditions to Western people. We analyze the Peking Gazette extracts in The Indo-Chinese Gleaner, summarize the pragmatic features, explore how the book was International Journal of Language and Linguistics 2019; 7(3): 93-101 used as a model for foreigners in China in the 19th century to translate the Peking Gazette, and sum up its cross-cultural communication strategies and skills
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