Adventures in Translating Between Cultures and Eras: A Double Launch for The Best China & The Monkey King
Department: Intl. Center for Writing and Trans.
Date and Time: February 17, 2021 | 11:00 AM-12:30 PMEvent Location: Zoom
Event Details
Adventures in Translating Between Cultures and Eras:
A Double Launch for The Best China & The Monkey King
Featuring John Minford and Julia Lovell
With a comment by Hu Ying
Jeffrey Wasserstrom moderating
Hosted, remotely, by UC Irvine’s International Center for Writing and Translation,
in partnership with the Los Angeles Review of Books
and co-sponsored by Birkbeck College, University of London, Department of History, Classics, and Archaeology.
in partnership with the Los Angeles Review of Books
and co-sponsored by Birkbeck College, University of London, Department of History, Classics, and Archaeology.
February 17, 11am PST and 7pm UK time (8am on February 18 in New Zealand)
This event, in which members of UCI’s History Department (Wasserstrom) and East Asian Studies Department (Hu Ying) will play the roles of moderator and discussant, respectively, will highlight the work of two extraordinary translators and scholars of Chinese culture. One is John Minford. He is an emeritus professor at ANU and holds a distinguished position at Hang Seng University in Hong Kong, and he has translated (or co-translated) both classic works of philosophy, including the Yi Ching (Yi Jing) and Tao De Ching (Dao De Jing), and classic works of literature, such as The Dream of the Red Chamber (aka The Story of the Stone). The other is Julia Lovell. She is a Professor at Birkbeck College, London, and she has translated works by Lu Xun, Yan Lianke, and other major modern writers. Minford’s most recent book is The Best China: Essays from Hong Kong (January 2021), the final volume in a six-part series devoted to Hong Kong literature, while Lovell’s is an abridged translation of Monkey King/Journey to the West (February 2021).This session, held just after the Year of the Ox begins and just before the Lantern Festival arrives, will be a “double happiness” book launch. It will also, though, use Minford and Lovell’s past and present works as a point of departure for a wide-ranging discussion of the perils and pleasures of trying to convey to international readers the richness and variation of Chinese cultural traditions, decidedly in the plural.