Translation: Lost

The always whimiscal Beijing Review this month extolls the importance of translators in bridging the cultural gap between East and West.  Given the stilted nature of the Review’s English-language articles, we were all wondering when they’d notice how important a good translator can be, but I digress:

The harmonious coexistence of different nations owes much to translation work, which at its best is able to remove linguistic barriers and facilitate communication between societies, cultures, regions and countries. The result of successful communication is inspiring, allowing new thoughts, wisdom and perspectives to seep into society.

Previously, China has experienced three main upsurges in its translation history: the surge of Buddhist sutra translation that began during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) and continued through the Tang and Song dynasties (AD 618-1279), the sci-tech document translation work that took place in the early 17th century during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and the translation of Western Studies between the Opium War and the May 4 Movement (1840-1919). All three periods have one thing in common: these translations played a leading role in the cultural and ideological progress of their respective eras.

June 26th, 2008

China’s academic blacklist

It’s a disturbing trend that shouldn’t come as any shock to anyone in the circle of foreign-based China researchers: step over the line and risk losing your access.

Paul Mooney writes in The National (h/t CDT) about the problems certain academics face when they run afoul of the anti-intellectual hacks generally in charge of such things here in the PRC.  The article cites a number of prominent scholars, including Perry Link and a personal favorite of mine, James Millward, whose Beyond the Pass is one of the great accounts of the Qing conquest of Χinjiang.  It was not Professor Millward’s historical work which got him in trouble, but rather his contributions to the book Χinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland which landed him, four years later and counting, on the outside looking in:

“It’s far easier to put the kibosh on someone than to lift it,” said James Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University and a contributor to the book.

All of the scholars, with the exception of one, have been refused visas to China, with only a few exceptions for special circumstances.

The message – which worried China scholars around the world – was clear. There are topics China will not tolerate discussion on

June 26th, 2008

Bernard-Henri Lévy on the sins of the political left in Darfur

From a speech given at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, on April 29, 2008, at Flourence Gould Hall in NYC, and republished in the June issue of Guernica:

In a few words—and maybe we will discuss this more deeply in the conversation later—we are here facing a sort of perverse effect of three great modern ideas. A sort of paradoxical and counter-effect of three great ideas, which are: anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and the fight against imperialism, three great ideas—among the best which have been produced in the 20th century. In this case, by a sort of ruse of history, they [have] produced a very strange effect.

Anti-racism: you have a huge part of the population in America and in Europe, who believe, as a sort of Pavlovian reflex, that these sort of murders, these sort of genocides, can only be committed by ugly, stupid, white men. As we did: white men in Auschwitz, in the Gulag, and so on, which is undoubtedly true. There is the idea that such mass murders committed by people who were themselves victims of racism [for] such a long time is a sort of contradiction in terms.

Anti-colonialism: we have been bred in the

June 26th, 2008

日历

June 2008
M T W T F S S
« May   Jul »
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30