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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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…….
评分应当是掌握了相当多的一手史料
评分作为历史读物确实为反欧洲中心论又添了一把柴火。读起来很流畅很有趣。不过，可能从侧面也反映出了一些历史作品的局限性。比如作者说是因为这些cultural mediator给决策者传递了错误的信息所以才导致了很多我们不想看到的后果。但是这也只是一种cultural exchange的情况。（不过还是给proposal灵感来源五星！
评分“以小见大”的微观史作品，主角是早已成为历史注脚的两位译者。作者从史料中回溯了小斯当东和李自标的一生，从两位译者的角度分析了当时中英两国的文化碰撞。前者因怕遭迫害而离开中国，从此以后再也没有来过中国，后者则在东躲西藏中度完余生。翻译并不是一件容易的事，尤其是在两国外交之时，译者首当其冲，两头不讨好，稍有不慎便会酿成不可挽回的后果，他们的选择甚至可以影响两个国家的关系。但译者又是极易被忽视的群体。即使是在今日，李和小斯当东的经历也极为不平凡，而两人之间的跨越山海的友谊则证明：只要我们认真倾听、共情和了解彼此，我们就能一起创建互相连接、和平对话的世界。
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