The Perils of Interpreting pdf epub mobi txt 电子书 下载 2025
Henrietta Harrison is professor of modern Chinese studies at the University of Oxford and the Stanley Ho Tutorial Fellow in Chinese History at Pembroke College. Her books include The Man Awakened from Dreams and The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village. She lives in Oxford, England.
The 1793 British embassy to China, which led to Lord George Macartney’s fraught encounter with the Qianlong emperor, has often been viewed as a clash of cultures fueled by the East’s disinterest in the West. In The Perils of Interpreting, Henrietta Harrison presents a more nuanced picture, ingeniously shifting the historical lens to focus on Macartney’s two interpreters at that meeting—Li Zibiao and George Thomas Staunton. Who were these two men? How did they intervene in the exchanges that they mediated? And what did these exchanges mean for them? From Galway to Chengde, and from political intrigues to personal encounters, Harrison reassesses a pivotal moment in British-China relations. She shows that there were Chinese who were familiar with the West, but growing tensions endangered those who embraced both cultures and would eventually culminate in the Opium Wars.
Harrison demonstrates that the Qing court’s ignorance about the British did not simply happen, but was manufactured through the repression of cultural go-betweens like Li and Staunton. She traces Li’s influence as Macartney’s interpreter, the pressures Li faced in China as a result, and his later years in hiding. Staunton interpreted successfully for the British East India Company in Canton, but as Chinese anger grew against British imperial expansion in South Asia, he was compelled to flee to England. Harrison contends that in silencing expert voices, the Qing court missed an opportunity to gain insights that might have prevented a losing conflict with Britain.
Uncovering the lives of two overlooked figures, The Perils of Interpreting offers a valuable argument for cross-cultural understanding in a better-connected world.
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可以算是心目中全球史与微观史结合又一个典型案例了，不只是跨文化的故事，更有大问题的关怀。
评分鸦战之前，中英两国都有对彼此有所了解的民众在，为何这场战争没能避免？关于异国的知识如何传播，而这些知识又能对一个国家的外交决策产生多大程度的影响…….种种在本书中展开的问题，都能让今日的我们有“似曾相识之感”。 （小斯当东和李自标都是其祖国的“文化异乡人”，这点竟让我很能共情…….
评分有些沧桑变换感的。另外，当读者在上帝视角看着当初清庭和官僚们的态度，就会觉得很可笑也很可怜。大清亡了？
评分以近代史史料之繁复，能够爬梳多语言档案、洞悉其中的草蛇灰线、又能以“深描”的叙事方式把大小历史结合起来的学者不多，沈老师算一位。数十年来关于马戛尔尼使团访华的研究汗牛充栋，但作者却别出心裁地将目光投注在了此行的两位译员身上，也因此有了许多有趣的发现：比如拉丁文才是翻译过程中的medium language，因为华人李自标自幼在那不勒斯学院接受的是古典学教育，并没有相应的英文知识，只能靠拉丁文与使节团进行沟通；以及使节团提出的天主教传教自由的要求其实是李出于自己的天主教徒背景而夹带进的“私货”，尽管并未获得成功。作者认为嘉庆时期对这种in-between的文化中介者的不信任导致了译者的疏离，进而造成决策者对英帝国信息的缺失和误判。如果最后没有又回到检讨鸦片战争失败原因的老路上就更好了……
评分人们在翻译时总是要做出选择，尤其在决定是否坚持使用原文时。为了原原本本地传达内容，翻译者的言语和写作，会尽量使用听众自己的语言。这只是翻译的固有问题之一，当两种语言和文化差异越大，翻译的问题就越复杂。反对挑衅性质的中文翻译，比如将“夷”翻译为barbarian。侵略性的翻译会激发对清朝的敌意，很可能将英国卷入战争。正因为翻译者拥有控制解释的力量，而技能突出的外交口译者通常都要在异文化中生活较长时间。一个人能够掌握外语并广泛了解外邦文明，那么他的忠诚度就会遭到怀疑。因此一旦国家之间发生冲突，翻译工作就是危险的。在许多政治背景，尤其是像清代中国这样高度集中和专制的体制中，对决策者所获得的知识进行控制是影响其决策的最有效手段之一，这一事实更加剧了翻译者的危险。
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