Earlier Interpretations Research Articles

Four Challenges Faced by Early Chinese Buddhist Translators: A Case Study of Zhi Qian’s Chinese Translation of Dhammapada

This study focuses on the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, specifically the Faju jing, a Chinese version of the Dhammapada completed in the third century CE. It reveals that the Faju jing is not a straightforward translation but a combination of different sources. The translator, Zhi Qian, faced challenges in integrating multiple translation practices, dealing with diverse original Indian languages, incorporating pre-existing phrases from other translators’ work, and managing divergent opinions within the translation team regarding the translation style. This multi-layered process of translation, involving the participation of multiple translators, also likely occurred in other early translations. These challenges extended beyond mere comprehension of the Indian text, resulting in potential errors and deviations from straightforward translations. It is possible that some mistranslations were a consequence of integrating multiple traditions within the source text, making it difficult for translators to maintain a consistent linguistic framework and leading to errors. Furthermore, this study highlights the remarkable efforts of Chinese translators who collaborated with foreign monks in translation groups. It emphasizes the important role of Chinese translators in integrating diverse translation processes and refining the language to suit Chinese readers. They incorporated earlier translations and modified the language to align with Chinese forms. Overall, this case study sheds light on the complexity of early Chinese Buddhist translations, influenced by the integration of multiple traditions and the localization of the texts. It underscores the significance of Chinese translators in the translation process and their contributions to the development of Chinese Buddhist literature.

Early English Translations of Grimm's "Children and Household Tales" as Children's Literature

The Children and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, KHM) by the Brothers Grimm are not only an integral part of German culture but have also become a global success over the last two centuries. Currently, the collections of the Grimm brothers include translations into over 100 languages, some of which were written during the lifetime of the Brothers Grimm. English editions in particular carry a considerable influence on the global reception of the tales, since most of the tales are received in a translation instead of the original language. However, many readers of the Grimms’ tales are not aware of this. It is often disregarded that a translation can rarely be described as identical to the original and is subject to different factors such as the translation tradition, the target culture, or the translator’s own ideas. The following essay investigates how and why the tales were edited in English translation to be modified as children’s literature.

An early intersemiotic translator of Milton in Brazil

This article provides the commented English translation of an ode (“To Milton”, composed of twelve stanzas) by the 18th-century Brazilian poet, Claudio Manuel da Costa. Our interpretation of the translated poem problematizes the fact that da Costa did not translate Milton’s works, but that he wrote an intersemiotic translation of Milton’s contributions to literature as a whole. “To Milton” concentrates and expands on themes related to Paradise Lost (hell and heaven, heavenly muses and earthly glory, civil wars and epic battles). Although there were no translations of Milton’s works into Brazilian Portuguese then, the ode illustrates the principles of intersemiotic translation, through which semantic expansions occur in the exercise of da Costa’s choices to invite Milton to participate in a nascent literary tradition; he approaches Milton as an author comparable to Camões and Torquato Tasso. Furthermore, we address the following questions: what does the commented translation reveal about Milton’s poetry that has not been as readily visible or legible? What was accomplished by bringing Milton into 18th-century Brazilian Portuguese? How is Milton accommodated to 18th-century Brazil and how is this new environment, prospectively or actually, different for having Milton in it?

A de novo variant of BICRA results in Coffin-Siris syndrome 12.

BICRA, a transcript regulator, was identified as the genetic factor of Coffin-Siris syndrome 12 (CSS12) recently, which was characterized by diverse neurodevelopmental delays. Up to now, limited studies of BICRA in neurodevelopmental delay have been reported. Clinical data such as EEGs, MRIs, routine blood, and physical examination were collected. Trio whole exome sequencing (WES) of the family was performed, and all variants with a minor allele frequency (<0.01) in exon and canonical splicing sites were selected for further pathogenic evaluation. Candidate variants were validated by Sanger sequencing. The BICRA-related literature was reviewed and the clinical characteristics were summarized. We reported a CSS12 proband with a narrow and slightly clinical phenotype who only exhibited language developmental delay, hypotonia, and slight gastrointestinal features. WES revealed a de novo variant in exon 6 of BICRA [NM_015711.3: c.1666C>T, p.Gln556*]. This variant resulted in an early translation termination at 556th of BICRA, not collected in the public population database (gnomAD), and classified as pathogenic according to the ACMG guideline. Our results expanded the pathogenic genetic and clinical spectrum of BICRA-related diseases.

Minima Clareniana: contributo per lo studio dei volgarizzamenti delle Chronicae di Angelo Clareno

This paper proposes an in-depth analysis of the manuscript tradition of the ancient vernacular translations of Angelo Clareno’s Chronicae. After providing a description and a study of the MS Bertoliano 45, the relationships among some of the codices of the most successful and earliest translation, called A, are investigated. In particular, the text of MS P (Pisa, BLLM, Malagoli 1) is examined to verify if the codex contains the same version A.

Mesenteric panniculitis in rheumatologist practice

Mesenteric panniculitis (MPn) is a rare form of adipose tissue inflammation, mainly of the intestinal mesentery, less often of the omentum, preand retroperitoneal tissue. There are not many descriptions of MPn in rheumatic diseases in the literature: in systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic sclerosis, Sjogren's syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis, mesenteric form (MF) of idiopathic lobular panniculitis (ILPn) and IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD). Given the polymorphism of clinical manifestations, including systemic ones, it is of interest to look at the problem of MPn from the perspective of a rheumatologist.Objective: to evaluate the clinical and laboratory features of MPn in modern rheumatological practice.Material and methods. The study included 64 patients (19 men and 45 women aged 19 to 76 years, median disease duration 28.6 [0.3; 243] months). Laboratory and instrumental studies were carried out according to a single algorithm, which included standard clinical, immunological methods, as well as the determination of fecal calprotectin and tumor markers, ultrasound of the skin and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT), computed tomography of the chest and abdominal organs, abdominal positron emission tomography, pathomorphological examination of biopsies of the skin, pancreas and mesentery.Results and discussion. 89% of patients had abdominal pain, 48.4% had nausea, 53.1% had weakness, 44% had subfebrile fever, 32.8% had articular syndrome, and 29.6% – skin and pancreas involvement. Median ESR was 34 [11; 52] mm/h, CRP level – 14 [2; 72] mg/l. Most of the immunological parameters remained within the normal range, but in some cases there was an increase in the concentration of rheumatoid factor, antibodies to the cyclic citrullinated peptide, IgG4. The level of tumor markers CA 125, CEA, CA 19–9 and TumorM2-PK was increased 2 times or more in 5 patients. In our study, all radiological signs and all degrees of severity of MPn were observed. An additional examination confirmed the presence of MF ILPn, RA, IgG4-RD, gastrointestinal, malignant, hematological and other diseases, which made it possible to identify five diagnostic blocks.Conclusion. Early diagnosis and correct interpretation of the described changes require a lot of work-up and a multidisciplinary approach, which contributes to accurate and timely recognition of the disease.

Early medieval vernacular Celtic glosses:originals or translations? A case study on the Vienna Bede.

This study investigates the Old Irish glossing tradition on the Venerable Bede's De Temporum Ratione, a computistical work from the early eighth century. Its main source is the Vienna Bede, a fragmentary manuscript with Old Irish and Latin glosses dating from the late eighth/early ninth centuries. It focuses on parallel glosses found in the Gloss-ViBe corpus where the Vienna Bede has an Old Irish gloss and the other manuscripts feature glosses in another language (Latin or Old Breton/Welsh). Minute analysis of individual glosses is used to determine whether early medieval vernacular Celtic glosses originals or translations from Latin glosses? The heterogenic nature of early medieval gloss corpora makes this a complex question for which there is no straightforward answer: for some glosses, a translation from Latin into Irish is almost inevitable, but others suggest Irish influence on the Latin parallel glosses. Accordingly, each case is discussed individually and the results are synthesised in the final part of the article.

Translation and Transmission

Translation and Transmission

The Catholic and the imperial power over early Chinese translation of Western law

ABSTRACT Western law in Chinese translation emerged in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, when Chinese and Western legal traditions shared little in common in terms of jurisdiction and political philosophy. The present study attempts to reconstruct that historical experience by looking at both textual difficulties and political forces that put an end to this first intellectual engagement between China and the West. In particular, it examines the fragmentary translations of and introductions to Western law by the Jesuits and their Chinese converts, and the politics played out between the progressive and the conservative, and between Catholicism and the imperial power, with an aim to build a historical lesson in translation.

Understanding the Third Reich by Means of the Law: The Decisions of the Supreme Restitution Court for Berlin as Sources on the Holocaust and the Development of Holocaust Interpretations

This article introduces the decisions of the Oberstes Rückerstattungsgericht für Berlin (Supreme Restitution Court for Berlin) as historical sources that contribute to a better understanding of how early interpretations of the Holocaust developed. The Oberstes Rückerstattungsgericht für Berlin was established in 1953 as the final court of appeals for restitution matters in West Berlin. Some of its decisions were published in a collection that would later be used by judges, lawyers and claimants. Legal experts and practitioners who dealt with restitution would also discuss these decisions extensively. As no other means of gathering insight into the Oberstes Rückerstattungsgericht für Berlin's work were available, its publications became the most important communicative channel for actors within the Court's jurisdiction. The decisions contained distinct narratives concerning the Third Reich that stressed the importance of authoritative political structures while also focussing on state agencies and the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei as main actors. The accounts given in the decisions were partly based on analyses of historical records that were performed either by the judges themselves or by historians at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich (Institute for Contemporary History). This article suggests that on a broader societal level, the decisions contributed to the dissemination of state-centred ideas about the Holocaust. At the same time, the text draws attention to their complicated genesis. Situating the emergence of the decisions alongside the concrete implementation of restitution laws, the Cold War in Berlin and Vergangenheitspolitik (politics of the past), I demonstrate that the perpetuation of state-focussed historical concepts, to a large extent, resulted from the judges’ desire to lessen their significant workloads and to work without the interference of political actors.

Traditional Conflict Management: How Early Interpreters Address Paul’s Reference to Those Baptized for the Dead (1 Corinthians 15:29)

Modern scholars often understand 1 Cor 15:29 as a clear reference to the baptism of living individuals as proxies for the departed. Yet before or at the time of 1 Corinthians, there appears to be no evidence for this practice or a similar one. A reasonable explanation for its emergence, therefore, is that the tradition derives from 1 Cor 15:29, rather than giving rise to it. Consequently, 1 Cor 15:29 supplies a unique opportunity to see how Paul’s earliest interpreters navigated the conflict between the emergent proxy baptism tradition and others they had inherited. Responses varied from acceptance (Marcion) to tolerance (Ambrosiaster) to rejection (Tertullian, Didymus, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Eznik) of proxy baptism as being what 1 Cor 15:29 describes. Adopters of proxy baptism found support in Paul for breaking with prior tradition and interpreted 1 Cor 15:29 as a basis for creating a new tradition that fit a distinctive need in their community. By contrast, those who tolerate or reject the proxy baptism interpretation do so by considering both 1 Cor 15:29 and Paul himself as more thoroughly situated within existing prior traditions that rule out proxy baptism. These different responses illustrate the complex interplay between Paul and the conflicting traditions through which his letters have been and continue to be received. These responses also surface key features of the interplay between conflict and tradition, whether that conflict occurs within explicitly religious spheres or not.

Invited Perspective: PFAS and the Childhood Obesity Phenotype-Challenges and Opportunities.

Invited Perspective: PFAS and the Childhood Obesity Phenotype-Challenges and Opportunities.

Rabbi Jesus in Martin Luther’s Bible Translations

Abstract This article explores the figure of Jesus as teacher in Martin Luther’s translation of the New Testament by analysing Luther’s translation of the word “rabbi.” In three of the four Gospels, several interlocutors call Jesus “rabbi.” In his earliest translation (1522), Luther rendered the word as “master” in almost all the verses where the word appeared. However, in the editions of the New Testament that appeared in 1526–30, Luther revised the translation and reinstated “rabbi” as a valid title of Jesus. In order to understand Luther’s meaningful reconsideration of one of the main biblical titles of Jesus, the article discusses Luther’s translation practice, his general view on biblical titles and his employment of the term “rabbi” in polemics. The article suggests that rather than anti- or pro-Jewish sentiments, Luther’s view on the figure of Jesus as teacher enabled the revision in the translation. For Luther, the word “rabbi” was a locus where the Jewish and the Christian met, where the historical Jesus could by glimpsed and the unique qualities of Jesus as a teacher, as the only teacher, could be expressed.

Revolutionizing Literacy: The Life of Omar ibn Said, Written by Himself

The Library of Congress has acquired the Omar ibn Said Collection, including an exceptional artifact, the autobiography of Omar ibn Said, written in ancient Arabic by an African enslaved man. In this article, I analytically examine the role of literacy in Omar ibn Said's life as informed by African cultures, ethnicities, histories, languages, and literacies in the Senegambia region, and the history of Black literacy access in the United States. In Arabic, Omar ibn Said stealthily applied sophisticated literacy skills to contest living under anti-Black racism and chattel enslavement through his rhetorical and strategic use of Qur’anic surahs and verses. Early translations and interpretations of his autobiography, filtered through Eurocentrism and White supremacy, failed to discern Omar ibn Said's proclamation of his humanity and bold condemnation of chattel enslavement. Africanist, Islamist, and Muslim scholars valorize his resilience as an African Muslim man who remained faithful to Islam under anti-Black racism, the horrors of chattel enslavement, and attempts at Christian conversion. They also provide knowledge about centuries of literacy among people of African descent; expose the pervasiveness of White supremacy; and unveil the roots of deliberate anti-Black literacy laws, policies, and practices, historically and contemporaneously. Omar ibn Said's autobiography dismantles prevailing assumptions about people of African descent as sub-human, without culture, history, intellect, language, or literacy. To create an equitable and ethical approach to literacy: We must transcend the past and present, respect humanity, acknowledge literacy as a global construct, understand literacy as a human right, cultivate a critical consciousness, and require authenticated knowledge.

Evaluation of a Cardiovascular Systems Model for Design and Analysis of Hemodynamic Safety Studies.

Early prediction, quantification and translation of cardiovascular hemodynamic drug effects is essential in pre-clinical drug development. In this study, a novel hemodynamic cardiovascular systems (CVS) model was developed to support these goals. The model consisted of distinct system- and drug-specific parameter, and uses data for heart rate (HR), cardiac output (CO), and mean atrial pressure (MAP) to infer drug mode-of-action (MoA). To support further application of this model in drug development, we conducted a systematic analysis of the estimation performance of the CVS model to infer drug- and system-specific parameters. Specifically, we focused on the impact on model estimation performance when considering differences in available readouts and the impact of study design choices. To this end, a practical identifiability analysis was performed, evaluating model estimation performance for different combinations of hemodynamic endpoints, drug effect sizes, and study design characteristics. The practical identifiability analysis showed that MoA of drug effect could be identified for different drug effect magnitudes and both system- and drug-specific parameters can be estimated precisely with minimal bias. Study designs which exclude measurement of CO or use a reduced measurement duration still allow the identification and quantification of MoA with acceptable performance. In conclusion, the CVS model can be used to support the design and inference of MoA in pre-clinical CVS experiments, with a future potential for applying the uniquely identifiable systems parameters to support inter-species scaling.

A trilingual reading of “A cartomante” by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Abstract. This article examines early translations of “A cartomante,” one of the most anthologized stories written by Brazilian author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. I compare an Argentine translation and an English translation vis-à-vis the Portuguese original to determine to what extent they preserve and reproduce the literary features of the original text. I assess the alterations of the authorial voice in terms of additions, omissions, word choice, and style. Translation studies notions developed by Ernst-August Gutt and Lin Zhu inform this analysis. Whereas the Argentine translation tends to present more typos, suppress words, and reduce the intensity of some passages, the English translation over-dramatizes and over-explains some scenes, at the same time that it reimagines the characters to make them more attractive to the US readership. However, both translations reject some of the most characteristic aspects of Machado de Assis’s writing such as colloquialism and self-reflexivity. The close reading of these translations can help improve our understanding of Machado de Assis’s reception in Latin America and the United States at the beginning of the 20th century.

VANITY FAIRIN RUSSIAN: TO THE 175 TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST PUBLICATION

The article examines four Russian translations of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: the early translation by Irinarkh Vvedenskii; the translations made by V. Stein and L. Gay at the turn of the century, and the translation by Mikhail Dyakonov published in 1933-1934. The latter, canonical for Russian culture, was published with a commentary by Gustav Speth in the Academiapublishing house. Different translation strategies are discussed: first, Vvedenskii’s strategy of coauthorship with the translated author, which is sometimes at odds with the intonation of the original. Secondly, Shtein’s and Gay’s aspiration to translate an acknowledged classic ‘word for word’, resulting in obscure expressions and syntactic structures. And finally, Dyakonov’s foreignizing, philologically accurate approach. As can be seen on the material of Dyakonov’s letters to the proofreaders of Academia, syntactically and phonetically foreignizing translation is his conscious strategy. It is noted that the corrections made by the editors M. Lorie and R. Galperina in 1953 and 1968 are mostly insignificant: they incorporate stylistic equivalents, strive for syntactic simplicity and remove ambiguity of certain expressions; besides, Lorie translates charactonyms in a later edition. The article also focuses on Shpet’s scholarly commentary, which has not been republished since his arrest in 1937. Unlike footnotes in later editions, Speth’s commentary primarily clarifies the function of a particular detail. The analysis demonstrates that Dyakonov’s translation method and Speth’s approach to the commentary require intellectual effort from the reader and are aimed at a deep understanding of English culture.

Gombrowicz in Transnational Context: Translation, Affect, and Politics

Gombrowicz in Transnational Context: Translation, Affect, and Politics

The Facets of Intercultural Dialogue: Russian Symbolists in Translation Counterpoint with French Modernists

The subject of the study is the translation strategies of Russian symbolist poets formulated in a creative intercultural dialogue with foreign symbolist poets. The object of the research is the strategy of paraphrastic free translation, common in the Russian translation heritage of the early twentieth century. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the dynamic interaction of the original text with the translation text, as well as various translation decisions taken by the authors of the Silver Age, due to the use of which they radically changed the goal setting and implication of the translated text. Special attention is paid to the comparison of the original and translated text and the moments of discrepancy between the translation and the original. The main conclusions of the study are the formulated characteristics of the early Symbolist translation, until the moment of active participation in the process of Valery Bryusov, and then - the publishing house "World Literature". A special contribution of the author to the study of the topic is the study of the purpose of the original and translated text and the identification of counterpoints in this regard of the intercultural dialogue between the author of the translation and the author of the original. The novelty of the research lies in the formulation of dialog strategies of Russian poets-translators - representatives of symbolism, their practice of dynamic interaction with equal, in their opinion, representatives of foreign language culture, and the creation of a creative translation based on the original text.

Conceptional Transfer and Early Russian Modernity (Reflection on: Laboratory of Concepts: Translation and Languages of Politics in Russia in the 18th Century. Ed. by S.V. Pol’skoy and V.S. Rzheutskiy. Moscow: NLO publ., 2022)

The authors of the book investigate the practices of translation in the context of socio-cultural transformations in the early years of the Russian Empire. Europe and Russia in the Age of Enlightenment were radically different semiotic systems, so the interpreters of western philosophy and political literature sparked a sort of “cultural revolution” in terms of the transfer of ideas and concepts, the genesis of a new public language. Early Russian interpreters introduced the world of western thought and the languages of politics and social thinking to the elites and to the emerging civil society. And as such the corpus of Russian interpretations is a more eloquent reflection of intellectual evolution than the original writings of Russian thinkers of that time. And given the fact that in those times translations would always involve the inception of new lexical and semantic elements, the “laboratory of concepts” scientific metaphor used in the book to denote the intellectual origination of Russian modernity is absolutely justified.