Erlangen, Germany

-->

(part 1)

I attended a workshop on China-related Translation Studies, held in Erlangen, Germany on July 20, 2013, and organized by Monika Gänßbauer, professor of the sinology department in Erlangen.

1. In her opening speech Monika gave a brief overview of translation in the Chinese context, with its two major waves of translation, first of the Buddhist texts, starting from the first centuries of the common era, and secondly when the Westeners arrived in the modern era. She also pointed out the ethics and responsibilities of the translator.

2. Then came the speech of Frank Kraushaar, who himself was not present, but whose speech was read by Monika. He repeated Eco’s idea that the translator should respect the author (more nuances were added during the discussion).

3. A young lady, whose name I forgot to write down (and who doesn’t figure in the programme, because she substituted a professor from Hong Kong who fell ill and could not come) spoke about her translation project and how the publishing looks like in Germany.

4. Joyce Liu from Chiao Tung University, Taiwan gave a very interesting and thorough speech on Liang Qichao and Zhang Taiyan. Zhang Taiyan’s political philosophy seems to be extremely interesting. He promoted the distinction of powers (administration, legislative, supervising, education and examination branch, president with limited powers) and the decentralization of government. This was related to his interpretation of Zhuangzi and especially Zhuangzi’s xinzhai.

5. Then I gave a speech on Billeter and Jullien and their different approaches to understanding (or thinking) in general and translation in particular.

6. Esther-Maria Guggenmos introduced her work on a buddhist apocryphical sutra on divination. She participates in a larger group of scholars (International Consortium for Research in the Humanities). She presented some examples of her translation and some problems related to her project. She showed also the special divination tools used together with this sutra.

7. Finally Monika gave a poetic and imaginative speech, where she compared, inter alia, translation to piracy. Like a ship is assaulted and its crew substituted by the pirates, and its flag by that of the pirates, a book is invaded by the translator, who replaces the words of the original with his/her own words.

Altogether we were around a dozen people, including other members of the faculty and also students. Every paper was followed by questions and a discussion. The atmosphere was friendly and intimate. Erlangen’s sinology department is situated in a separate house (that used to be a police station, some of which paraphernalia are still there, e.g. bars and heavy doors in the basement), which also created a more cozy atmosphere than perhaps would have been in a normal big university building.

I must underline the hospitality of Monika who was extremely considerate towards the members of the workshop and its guests. The day after she took Joyce and me to Nuremberg, where we walked around the old town and visited the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Later we were invited to the place of her sister who lives in Nuremberg, and we had an interesting talk on several topics together with Monika’s sister and brother-in-law who proved to be very warm hosts. I appreciated these moments very much; it gave a glimpse into the life of local people. Otherwise when you just attend the conference, live in the hotel and do some tourism, it feels anonymous and superficial. But if you see locals in their own environment, it gives another flavour.