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<p>[QUOTE="EWC3, post: 4529411, member: 93416"]Sure Doug – a Chinese reader can read the Official History of the Sung dynasty, published in 1346 – all 486 chapters. I think no English translation exists of this, and no doubt a great deal of other material.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://chinesenotes.com/songshi.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://chinesenotes.com/songshi.html" rel="nofollow">http://chinesenotes.com/songshi.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>I am a hopeless linguist myself, so other may think me biased, but the ability to learn foreign languages seems to be a genetic thing, some people are born that way - some are not. Reading original text seems vital to me, and even better in the original language. However, most of us do not read Chinese and never will, so its important that we get and rely upon translators who properly understand what they are translating. That is clearly far from always the case.</p><p><br /></p><p>My little book on Wang Mang in part was written to specifically address that issue. Homer Dubbs for instance did a great service in translation say the Chinese “Food and Money” but his footnotes to the text sometimes seem absurd (and would in any language). Life is complicated, and we must do the best we can on what we have.</p><p><br /></p><p>Our amateur Victorian forebears translated huge amounts of text out of Sanskrit and Arabic, and there were important somewhat independent translations of Chinese texts by both old time French and US guys. (Maverick in the US did some great work back in the day – long since I corresponded with his son trying try figure out the background to his particular brand of independent translation)</p><p><br /></p><p>Translation efforts seem to me to have nearly stopped in Universities today – I do not seem to see much new translation work going on.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="EWC3, post: 4529411, member: 93416"]Sure Doug – a Chinese reader can read the Official History of the Sung dynasty, published in 1346 – all 486 chapters. I think no English translation exists of this, and no doubt a great deal of other material. [URL]http://chinesenotes.com/songshi.html[/URL] I am a hopeless linguist myself, so other may think me biased, but the ability to learn foreign languages seems to be a genetic thing, some people are born that way - some are not. Reading original text seems vital to me, and even better in the original language. However, most of us do not read Chinese and never will, so its important that we get and rely upon translators who properly understand what they are translating. That is clearly far from always the case. My little book on Wang Mang in part was written to specifically address that issue. Homer Dubbs for instance did a great service in translation say the Chinese “Food and Money” but his footnotes to the text sometimes seem absurd (and would in any language). Life is complicated, and we must do the best we can on what we have. Our amateur Victorian forebears translated huge amounts of text out of Sanskrit and Arabic, and there were important somewhat independent translations of Chinese texts by both old time French and US guys. (Maverick in the US did some great work back in the day – long since I corresponded with his son trying try figure out the background to his particular brand of independent translation) Translation efforts seem to me to have nearly stopped in Universities today – I do not seem to see much new translation work going on. Rob T[/QUOTE]
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