图书标签:
发表于2025-04-24
The Perils of Interpreting pdf epub mobi txt 电子书 下载 2025
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.
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.
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!
评分真的太好看了!此处立誓要写出一本差不多好看的!
评分应当是掌握了相当多的一手史料
The Perils of Interpreting pdf epub mobi txt 电子书 下载 2025