Abstract
David Holm is an English native speaker of high proficiency in Zhuang language and Meng Yuanyao is a Zhuang native speaker of great familiarity with English. They worked together to produce an English version Hanvueng: The Goose King and the Ancestral King: an Epic from Guangxi in Southern China. This book is translated from the vernacular scriptures of the Zhuang Ethnic Group, one of the Chinese minorities. It was published in 2015. Based on a careful reading of this book, the author of this article argues: firstly, this book is of ethnographic Zhuang-English translation because it was translated directly from Zhuang language to English language by adopting ethnography methods of fieldwork and it provides numerous cultural and linguistic notes for those items that may be difficult for readers to understand; secondly, it characterizes the joint efforts of in-and-out governmental organizations, including various organizations, work units, and research projects, and the collaborative work of Zhuang and English giants, authority figures, involving officials, scholars, and common people; thirdly, it is no doubt a good example of ethnographic thick-translation version in translating Zhuang classics into English. This book provides a new approach to translating and introducing minority ancients works to the outside world to promote international communication and it is of great referential significance for “going global” strategy of Chinese minority classics.
Highlights
IntroductionIt is an English version with the Hanvueng scripture, one of the the vernacular scriptures of the Zhuang Ethnic Group called Baeu Rodo scriptures, as its source text
After the publication of his two books Recalling Lost Souls: The Baeu Rodo Scriptures, Tai Cosmogonic Texts from Guangxi in Southern China (2003) and Killing a Buffalo for the Ancestors: a Zhuang Cosmological Text from Southwest China (2004), David Holm, together with his co-author Meng Yuanyao, produced another book Hanvueng: The Goose King and the Ancestral King: an Epic from Guangxi in Southern China. It is an English version with the Hanvueng scripture, one of the the vernacular scriptures of the Zhuang Ethnic Group called Baeu Rodo scriptures, as its source text
After decades of hard work, including fieldwork visiting, manuscript collecting, selecting, recording, translating, annotating, editing, and proofreading, the Chinese edition of The Baeu Rodo Scriptures: An annotated Translation was published, a part of which is the Chinese text of Hanvueng, the source text for David Holm to translate
Summary
It is an English version with the Hanvueng scripture, one of the the vernacular scriptures of the Zhuang Ethnic Group called Baeu Rodo scriptures, as its source text. Based on selections from nine different manuscripts, some of which were centuries old and whose texts were written in predominantly five-syllable verse, the Chinse edition of The Baeu Rodo Scriptures: An annotated Translation was a collection of scriptures totaled over 1230 pages and presented 27 texts It was published in Nanning, the provincial capital of Guangxi in China by Guangxi People’s Publishing House in 1991. Based on detailed reading and close examination of the translation work, the author of this article argues that the English version of Hanvueng is an ethnographic Zhuang-English translation, an effective cooperation between Zhuang and English native speakers, and a typical example of thick translation
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