The consequences of interpreting: the Qianlong Emperor, Lord Macartney, George Staunton, and Li Zibiao
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I'm led to this topic by a consideration of one of the six books that made the short list for the Wolfson History Prize, which is the UK's most prestigious history book prize, as introduced by Sudhir Hazareesingh, who is interviewed by Sophie Roell, in "The Best History Books of 2023", Five Books (11/12/23).
Because this is Language Log, we skip directly to Henrietta Harrison’s The Perils of Interpreting, which is about a key episode in Chinese history when, in 1793, the British envoy Lord Macartney (1737-1806) was rebuffed by the Qianlong emperor (1711-1799). Roell prompts Hazareesingh to tell her about this book, what it’s about, and why the judges liked it.
Hazareesingh responds (with slight amplifications and modifications):
In a narrow sense, this is a twin biography. It’s about two translators who are actors in this big drama of the encounter between the British and Chinese empires in the late 18th and early 19th century—from the 1790s through to the Opium Wars in the late 1830s.
One of these two figures is George Staunton (1781-1859), who’s a child prodigy. He learns to speak Chinese when he’s very young and meets the emperor when he’s twelve years old. He must have been insufferable! He stays on in China and becomes an interpreter for the East India Company.
Then we have this remarkable character, Li Zibiao (1760-1828), who’s part of the Catholic tradition in China. A lot of people will discover the existence of this because there’s a general assumption that China in that period is completely inward-looking, and largely closed to the world. The fact that Li Zibiao goes to Naples, becomes a Catholic priest, and learns Latin doesn’t help his career. But at this particular moment, and in this encounter, he plays a very important role.
The slightly larger story Henrietta Harrison is telling is about the role of these two translators in mediating the encounter between these two powers that are trying to reach some kind of accommodation. It’s a wonderfully subtle book because when you look at the diplomatic history, the way in which this encounter is normally written about, it’s about clashes, about oppositions. It’s generally written in a binary way. What she’s trying to do is go beyond those oppositions and find, through these two people, the spaces where compromise and mutual understanding could be reached.
Translation is one critical way in which this could happen. She has wonderful examples. How you translate the Chinese word yi [yí 夷] makes a huge difference: whether you’re calling the British ‘foreigners’ or ‘barbarians.’ You could translate it with either word. If you use one, it has one set of consequences; and if you do the other, it has a different set of consequences. That whole part of the book where she dwells on the skills that these interpreters bring to bear is fascinating.
In overall terms, the interpreters are not strong enough to be able to control the outcome, so, in the end, the two sides clash. But what the book implies—and she more or less says it—is that had they listened to their interpreters or taken them a bit more seriously, then the Opium Wars might not have happened in the way that they did.
Roell opines:
When you study Chinese history, that meeting is such a caricature—the Qianlong emperor rejects the goods the British are offering as useless trinkets and that leads to the Opium Wars. But reading this book, it all comes to life. Lord Macartney spoke in Italian, which he’d learned in Italy, and then Li Zibiao translated from Italian into Chinese. All these details I found fascinating.
Hazareesingh rejoins:
Also, one of the things that she digs out really impressively is the understanding that we now have of how badly this encounter went was created later on. It made me think of a more general point, which is that a lot of information we have about these landmark historical moments often come to us through understandings that we think are based on fact, but they aren’t at all. History is based on facts, but these facts are also social constructions.
The Chinese nationalists in the early 20th century absolutely had an agenda—a perfectly understandable one, which was to pump up China and bash the West—and therefore, they ended up providing this account, which more or less erased the role of more consensual approaches. That’s how history gets written.
The same antagonistic approach to the translation of key term in trade agreements between the United States and the PRC exists today in the first quarter of the 21st century with Chinese diplomats fiercely opposing the American proposals for how to translate the simple word "shall" — with grave consequences for the prospects of an amicable agreement. I will post on this matter within a week, I hope.
Selected readings
- "Character amnesia in 1793-1794" (4/24/14)
- "The Great Translation Movement" (4/19/22)
- "Malign Woodpeckers and Other Hegemonic Behavior" (4/18/22) — with lengthy bibliography
[Thanks to Barbara Phillips Long]
ajay said,
January 3, 2024 @ 4:13 am
The Chinese nationalists in the early 20th century absolutely had an agenda—a perfectly understandable one, which was to pump up China and bash the West—and therefore, they ended up providing this account, which more or less erased the role of more consensual approaches.
This is a particularly bad moment in history for this, as all sorts of factions have an interest in pushing the same (false) interpretation – that China was an insular, arrogant, decadent empire that didn't realise the fatal danger it was in from the ruthless imperialists. If you're a nationalist, that just shows how important it is to modernise China. If you're a communist, it's the start of the period of Humiliation that ends with China standing up in 1949 (and then admittedly wobbling a bit for the next 30 years, but still 70% upright). If you're pro-British Empire, it shows that China was overdue to be swept away by the modern world, embodied in Britain. If you're anti-British Empire it shows how awful the Empire was for taking advantage of the childlike luxurious Orientals in its programme of ruthless expansion. Etc etc.
But China in 1793 was anything but insular, as the rest of central Asia could ruefully have told you – it was the largest empire in the world by both territory and population, and most of that territory had been acquired by the Qianlong emperor, at incredible cost in blood and silver.