Lessons from Compiling and Translating Homoeroticism in Imperial China:A Sourcebook

Mark STEVENSON

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract:Compiling and translating historical sourcebooks or anthologies can present specific translation challenges,including selecting source material,establishing translation teams,deciding on translation policy,and providing contextualizing information.Translating and editing Homoeroticism in Imperial China:A Sourcebook(Stevenson & Wu,2013) involved a large range of text genres treating about two thousand years of an easily misread aspect of Chinese cultural history.It is unusual to have a single translator or translation team in charge of an entire anthology,and this article begins with different skills that justify our “companion collaborative translation” approach throughout.The analysis then moves to areas of cultural and temporal distance and dangers of historical assumption,noting that sweeping sociocultural change in the 20th century left Chinese societies distant from aspects of their own pasts.Finally,it is argued that historical translation should be recognized by research bodies as fundamental humanities and social science research,providing valuable insights into human diversity.

Keywords:collaborative translation; traditional Chinese literature; anthologies and sourcebooks;homosexuality; postcolonialism

1.A book

In this paper I aim to reflect on my (also “our”,see below) experience in selecting,compiling,and translatingHomoeroticism in Imperial China:A Sourcebook(Stevenson & Wu,2013,hereafterSourcebook),mindful that translating a volume of this kind may have latent lessons for translators and researchers in translation studies,and perhaps even for academic publishers and research funding agencies.The anthology is principally thematized by sexuality,locality,and time,with all the challenges of interdisciplinarity we would expect with research across time and cultures.It contains translations from over sixty pre-modern Chinese sources on same-sex desire,ranging over histories and philosophers,poetry,drama,fiction,and miscellanies (笔记biji).The five generic categories—presented in this order—also reflect the chronological development and influence of China’s principal literary genres.All of the selections were translated from classical Chinese and written Chinese vernacular into English by the editor-translators.Translation was conducted by a team working side by side in front of the ST.As one of the two editor-translators,I prepared the contextualizing introductions accompanying each item,and the introductions to each genre section.If my memory is correct,the entire project took us around four years,from June 2008 when we submitted the book proposal to Routledge to May 2012 when we submitted the files of the completed manuscript,or five years if we consider the period of book preparation between 2012 and the book’s release in 2013.

In part,the book’s conception and design along genre and chronological lines was inspired byHomosexuality in Greece and Rome:A Sourcebook of Basic Documentsedited by Thomas K.Hubbard (2003).However,that book brought together previously published items translated by a range of scholars for a range of different purposes.I am not sure if there are many sourcebooks where all contents were entirely translated by the same translator or co-translators,as our selections were.We decided on that strategy because one of the aims of the project was to address what we perceived as misperceptions and errors appearing in previous translations of homoerotic materials from Chinese history,largely as a result of“modern” perspectives that assume a story of general cultural interdiction.

2.A translation team and approach

To put our work on the book in context,at least in part,it may be useful to consider the translations we had published together up to that time as a “companion collaborative translation” team (Trzeciak-Huss,2018).We started with a translation ofChipozi zhuan痴婆子传 (“A Tale of an Infatuated Woman”),a very explicit erotic tale from the late 16th century,which we published inRenditions译丛 in 2002.Wu Cuncun had a photocopy of the 1764 woodblock edition and was working on an English version of her paper treating karmic retribution in erotic fiction.We guessed there should be interest in this little-known early work of erotic fiction,andRenditions’ editors at the Chinese University of Hong Kong accepted it without any hesitation.The relationship withRenditionsled to an invitation to translate a play for a special edition of the journal,which focused on the legends of Wang Zhaojun (王昭君) and was published the following year (Stevenson & Wu,2003).This was followed several years later by a translation of a 9th-century examination candidate’s memoir of homoerotic flirtations with actors in Beijing,Fengchengpinhua ji凤城品花记 (“Notes on Flower Appreciation in the Phoenix City”,1876).We were very grateful to the editorial team atRenditionsfor their patience and extensive expertise in Chinese-English literary translation during the preparation for all the three works.

All the above work fitted much more within Cuncun’s range of expertise than mine.Until then,as an anthropologist teaching at Victoria University in Melbourne,I had been solely focused on my research into the revival of Tibetan art in China after 1978.My only previous experience of translation was a short story as well as passages from a history of the Tibetan region of Amdo (southern Qinghai,southern Gansu,and northern Sichuan).After two stints at universities in China,Liaoning University 1984-1986 (studying language) and Sichuan University 1989-1991 (minority nationality history and conducting doctoral fieldwork),I had an embarrassingly vague knowledge of China’s literary landscape,and even more embarrassingly,very little knowledge of the Sinological context that informed the study of Chinese literature in the West.Cuncun’s first attempt at publishing in English,a paper on karmic retribution in erotic fiction,was rejected precisely as a consequence of our not being up to speed on Sinological convention and the existing Western scholarship (we eventually rewrote it together [Wu& Stevenson,2011]).Cuncun,by contrast,had an extraordinary education in traditional Chinese literature,starting at home during 1966-1976.She had subsequently completed her BA majoring in Chinese literature at Hangzhou University,later completing an MA on scholar-beauty romance fiction(才子佳人小说caizijiaren xiaoshuo) at Nankai University,where she also taught classical Chinese literature.Her first single-authored book,Ming-Qing shehui xing’ai fengqi明清社会性爱风气 (Sex and Sensibility in Ming and Qing Society,2000),came out just as she started her doctoral studies under Professor Anne E.McLaren in Australia,but she had been publishing academic articles on same-sex desire in traditional Chinese literature since 1992.Originally a theme she had noticed when working on scholar-beauty fiction,homoerotic sensibilities in late imperial China became the focus of her doctoral dissertation and her first book in English (Wu,2004).What initially caught my attention in her work was the this-worldly mysticism of the “Learning of the Mind” (心学xinxue) strand of late-Ming neo-Confucianism,an intellectual trend that formed much of the background to the literary currents she was researching.It was the strong Buddhist undercurrent within the Learning of the Mind literature that interested me,as well as the paradox of its role in the onset of late-Ming libertinism.I tend to see the late Ming period as China’s own “Enlightenment,” a turn from tradition to rationality that was driven by commerce.As occurred in Europe,one consequence of the new intellectual attention to everyday life was a flood of pornographic writing (Hunt,1993).In China,Cuncun’s work was not just new in giving scope to gender and sexuality in cultural history; it was also part of a wider reappraisal of the Learning of the Mind (Israel,2016).

As well as collaborating on the separate works mentioned above,I offered to work together with Cuncun on passages from Chinese literature that appeared in her thesis and later her book,Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China(2004).As part of this budding companion translation team,my main principle was to listen carefully to what Cuncun read and said as we worked on each item,which is to say,with a sense of curiosity that suspended judgment,nevertheless trying to tie everything I was hearing into patterns that fitted together in their own terms:“How was what I was hearing part of what else was happening back then?” This contextualism and suspension of preconceptions comes with cultivating an anthropologist’s attitude of cultural relativism in communication with cultural “others” (Pollio et al.,1997).I was also by this time reading studies of gender and sexuality in Chinese history published in English,gradually getting a feel for Sinological expectations as well as getting better acquainted with the historical Chinese materials through Western scholarship.1Writing about the “construction” of anthropology as a field,Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson sum up a situation that could describe the construction of Sinology or Chinese Studies:“Other national traditions are marginalized by the workings of geopolitical hegemony,experienced as a naturalized common sense of academic ‘center’ and ‘periphery.’Anthropologists working at the ‘center’ learn quickly that they can ignore what is done in peripheral sites at little or no professional cost,while any peripheral anthropologist who similarly ignores the ‘center’ puts his or her professional competence at issue (‘They’re so out of it,[sic] they haven’t even heard of X’)” (1997,p.27).These are structures familiar to post-colonial translation studies through the work of Tejaswini Niranjana (1992) and Maria Tymoczko(1999).Working alongside Cuncun,I was not only accumulating lessons in translating primary source materials,but each item we translated was also a new lesson in reading literary Chinese and reading cultural history.As we worked on Cuncun’s source materials,we became increasingly aware of the constraints in academic writing that mostly limited passages to short extracts.Pulling out isolated lines or poems here or there,as was inevitably being done in academic studies,seemed mostly concerned with merely pointing to the existence of homoerotic references in the literary and historical archives,or in some cases,refuting their value as evidence.Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial Chinawas all about exploring the significance of homoerotic references in the context of elite male libertinism that reached much further back in history.The continuity,abundance,and range of materials suggested the possibility of an anthology where,in translation,they could be read in a fuller form.The historical sources were more than simply evidence.They were intricate stories,poems,and plays that were created to move,amuse,and bring laughter,puzzlement,or pause for thought.“Notes on Flower Appreciation in the Phoenix City”,published inRenditionsin 2008 was our first attempt at translating a complete narrative work.This was around the time we approached Routledge,the publisher of Cuncun’s book,convinced of the rewards of investing time in an anthology project.

By that time,as we explained in our book proposal,the subject of homoeroticism in Chinese history was “proving to be a minefield for both specialists and non-specialists alike,and there [were] growing problems of definition,misunderstanding,oversight,and ignorance within international scholarship,largely as a result of the difficulties of classical Chinese and the neglect of context”.Interest,we surmised,existed among three primary areas:scholars and students in area studies (Chinese Studies,Asian Studies),scholars and students in gender and sexuality studies,and the interested public.Under these circumstances,our main aim was to make accurate translations available in a form that would be both informative and literary,which meant that items in the anthology could be appreciated as translated literature,not just historical document.This addressed the two broad markets or readerships we had in mind,academic and general.The primary academic market would be university-based researchers and their students in post-graduate and upper-level undergraduate classes in the broad areas of social sciences and cultural studies,including gender studies,gay and lesbian studies,comparative literature,history,and anthropology.But we also expected interest from,and sought to meet the needs of,well-educated readers interested in sexual and gender minorities and literary expressions of same-sex desire.Because works in classical Chinese have become increasingly inaccessible,we thought a good part of general reader interest would also come from English speakers in China and Chinese heritage communities overseas.

3.Lesson one:Writing what isn’t written

In a project ranging across several genres and two and a half millennia,we were bound to face innumerable challenges,large and small,and this is not the place to conduct anything approaching a complete survey of them.Instead,I will limit myself to two or three passages that illustrate several of the challenges gender and sexuality pose for literary translation.The first passage is taken from a vernacular short story (话本huaben),“A Male ‘Mother of Mencius’ Educates His Son and Moves House Three Times,” (男孟母教合三迁Nan Mengmujiaohesanqian,hereafter “Male ‘Mother of Mencius’ ”) penned by the great 17thcentury satirist,Li Yu (李渔 1611-1680).It is a story that was already quite well known—and widely discussed—in Chinese Studies,in large part through the translation by Gopal Sukhu and Patrick Hanan(1990).There were no glaring problems with the existing translation.It was simply an important story that would be missed if omitted,and one of our compiling principles was that we translated everything in the sourcebook ourselves.As a work of literature,“Male ‘Mother of Mencius’ ” holds much interest for literary translation,as satire is often a dialogical,carnivalesque genre that requires writing with several points of view visible at once—usually achieved through a mix of registers.These were challenges that China’s early-modern fiction writers and readers clearly enjoyed,but that can leave the 21st-century translators and readers with some tough ground to cover.

“Male ‘Mother of Mencius’ ” tells the story of You Ruilang,a beautiful and much sought-after young Fujianese boy,who is seduced by Xu Jifang,a scholar-official on the lookout for a “step-wife” (续弦xuxian,“replacement lute string”),after losing his first wife at the birth of their son.Improbably,Jifang is a former catamite (龙阳longyang) who had risen socially through winning examination honors.And once he and Ruilang are married and cohabitating,his “insider knowledge” leads him both to appreciate Ruilang’s devotion as well as fear his maturing “manhood below his waist” (腰下的人道yaoxia de rendao).Ruilang reassures him that in a committed relationship like theirs,he will never be tempted by women,and should he experience unwanted desires,he can always turn to masturbation.But this is not enough to assuage Jifang’s fears,as we see in the following passage,where there are also several enlightening instances of problems challenging translators.

“The complexion of older people is not as good as those in the prime of life,and the complexions [sic] of those in the prime of life is not as good as those in their youth.And why is that? You should know that the volume of the vapours running through the kidneys [肾水的消长] influences the quality of a person’s complexion [颜色的盛衰].Do you know why you are so good-looking at this moment in time? Your original store of virile energy has yet to be depleted [元阳未泄].You are just like an unopened flower bud in which the original vitality remains concentrated [根本上的精液总聚在此处],and so you have a glowing complexion and a sweet-scented body.Once it is opened and your vitality has an outlet [精液就有了去路],your complexion will become duller and duller day by day and your scent will be weaker and weaker day by day,and in time they will all dry up.The stuff you release [遣出来的东西] when you now seek relief [遣兴] is in no way trivial,[sic] it is the very glow of your skin and the shine on your face.Every loss from below has a corresponding loss from above [底下去了一分，上面就少了一分].There’s nothing you can do about it personally,[sic] it is just one of the facts of human life,and no one can escape the transition from youth to old age.Who can remain young for ever? Having immeasurable love for you and no way to preserve your youth,I had to get it off my chest,but there is nothing to do beyond accepting it.”

Ruilang was terrified by what he heard.“That he loves me so devotedly now all hangs upon my beauty,” he thought to himself.“If by any chance my original vitality is released [元阳泄去] and my beauty is lost he’ll grow tired of me,and then even if I haven’t broken off with him he’ll end up dumping me.What should I do?”Speaking to Jifang he said,“I had no idea the thingy1Here zhe jian dongxi (这件东西).Elsewhere in our translation of this story we use “thingy” to translate ci wu (此物),which the narrator and Jifang use to refer to the penis,or more specifically to Ruilang’s penis.While Jifang also refers to Ruilang’s penis as zhe jian dongxi when pointing to it,the distinction is one of register,with ci wu being a more formal,but nevertheless humorous,term.Ci wu may be a formal equivalent influenced by the vernacular na hua (那话,“that word,” i.e.“the unmentionable”,“that organ” in Roy’s translation) found in Jin Ping Mei cihua 金瓶梅词话.was so terrible.In that case,please stop worrying,I will find a way to handle it.”

A few days later Jifang rose early and left the house to go to a scheduled examination.Ruilang got up and attended to his morning toilet.Taking a mirror he found a bright corner and looked himself over,and as he did so he became anxious.“Looking at my face,” he reflected,“it is really different from what it was.In the white there used to be a hint of pink,but now the white is even paler and the pink is thin.Could what he said really be true? Is that sticky stuff [脓血] really so crucial as that? He has sold all his property and has nothing left to support him through life,and if our family had never run into him neither of my parents would have had a decent resting place.He has been so kind and I have not begun to repay him; how can I allow myself to age like this?” (Stevenson & Wu,2013,pp.206-207)

Reading this passage some seven years later.While I know it was polished and set aside,and polished several times more,there are still segments I might be tempted to smooth further in the direction of target language expectations,and segments I think were taken too far in the same direction.These are doubts a writer might have after a passage of time as well,but as a translator I think of them as differences between the set of instincts we have with the source text in front of us and the instincts we have once the source text has been put aside.For example,the parallelism evident in the ST is not quite so apparent in the TT “You should know that the volume of the vapours running through the kidneys influences the quality of a person’s complexion” (要晓得肾水的消长，就关于颜色的盛衰).In Chinese vernacular literature,parallelism,which is more natural to classical writing,is commonly used to convey particular kinds of emphasis,in this case an argument for an indisputably natural correlation.In the translation process,we aimed for smooth reading,and for this reason,parallelism in our TT is only observable to someone looking for it.A structure where the rhythm of the first segment was reflected in the second would have better conveyed the naturalness of the link between both segments.Our instincts regarding other examples of smoothing in this sentence were good:“volume” instead of “ebb and flow”,“quality”instead of “rise and fall”,which preserve a contrast in the parallel structure of the ST.“[V]apours running through the kidneys” runs close to the imagery of the ST,but the ST term (肾水shenshui,“kidney fluid”)is a synonym for “semen”:had we in fact written “semen” instead of the longer locution,we would have ended up with a more parallel TT structure (but lost the traditional Chinese medicine theory the passages is intended to mimic).Overly direct translation would confuse,and smoothing further would supress both the imagery and the underlying theory of causality.Further work on the second segment may have produced something along the lines of “You should know thatthe volume of the vapours running through the kidneysinfluences thequality of the colour visible in a person’s cheeks,” which would have preserved the mirroring in the ST.I expect,nevertheless,that the finality in the rhythm of the published TT is the right note to strike for readers who will be more interested in the fate of the two men,than in a foreign rhetorical structure—and who might find a link between kidneys and cheeks distracting.

The problem,however,is not simply one of preserving cultural information from the ST in the TT.Li Yu enjoys shifts in register and diction,as we would expect from a man of the theater,and there is no reason to doubt such playfulness played a large part in his literary success (Mei,2011).He can take wicked delight in the antics of his characters,but will indulge in a more censorious tone when the social situation he portrays requires some inflation before its eventual deflation.At this point in Li Yu’s tale,Ruilang and Jifang face a very serious obstacle to the future of their loving relationship.Nevertheless,the author is intent on his reader smiling at their fix—even while sharing a little of their dismay.In this passage the effects of register and diction are in large part achieved through the technical language of traditional Chinese sexual hygienics,a register in keeping with Jifang’s scholar-official status,but all the same a very strange way in which to speak to a lover.The entire paragraph is a mini lecture that progressively informs the reader,just as it instructs Ruilang.

Recreating something of these effects is one of the pleasures of working in literary translation,but how is a reader who has no knowledge of the place of sexual hygiene in Chinese theories of health able to follow the semi-serious comical logic of a passage if it is filled with mysterious jargon? We chose to find ways of conveying Jifang’s science that sidestepped the technical English versions of traditional Chinese medicine terminology.Li Yu makes it easy for his readers by announcing the central issue first,namely the danger that masturbation represents for Ruilang’s as yet un-depleted “original store of virile energy”(元阳yuanyang,“original male,” the subtle basis of semen-as-manifest-life-substance located in the kidneys).Using a strategy that many storytellers use,a translator can seek to manage how new knowledge is introduced and augmented:“vapours running through the kidneys”,“virile energy”,“vitality”,“stuff”,“sticky stuff” (脓血 “mix of pus and blood”).Progressing from the subtlest imagery to the coarsest,Li Yu is all talking about semen without naming it directly,for even when he does name “it” (精液jingye),it is so subsumed within the medical jargon that we must also choose not to name it (hence “vitality”).1There is nothing so coarse as to mention this “stuff” directly—Derrida would have had a field day,for in having so many names,it may not have a name of its own.“The seed must thus submit to the logos.And in so doing,it must do violence to itself,since the natural tendency of sperm is opposed to the law of logos [the authority of rational discourse],” concludes Derrida in his discussion of Plato’s Timaeus (Derrida,2004,p.153); see also Ding Naifei’s insistence on the compound “essence/semen” in Obscene Things:Sexual Politics in Jin Ping Mei (2002,p.289).

Concern about the effects of over-expenditure of semen on overall health was until recently very common in Western culture,but if it was ever accompanied by complex biological or humoural theories,they are long forgotten.When examples such as this passage are considered,forSourcebookto be useful for readers interested in cross-cultural study of gender and sexuality,we had to produce translations that preserved a high level of cultural nuance—a combination of cultural information and aesthetic or literary impact,which was why we had committed to using our own translations exclusively from the outset.We also subscribed to what we might call a principle of the “Renditionsschool of translation”,where footnotes are kept to a minimum and cultural information is integrated unobtrusively within the body of TT; after all,it is the text body that is more likely to be quoted and reproduced.

4.Lesson two:Replacing the past

It is well known in Western scholarship,at least since the appearance of Colin Mackerras’sThe Rise of the Peking Opera,1770-1870(1972),that male same-sex desire was an integral part of the evolution and popularity of Peking opera,and also that elite men—capital examination candidates,scholar officials,and merchants—spent much of their spare time competing for the attentions of the most popular stars.All actors were male,and the residences (私寓siyu) of the most popular among them functioned like exclusive nightclubs (Wu,2017).There was also a less upmarket “peach garden bathhouse” scene (梨园堂子liyuantangzi).Because of the amount of homoerotic theatergoing literature available,most of it initially collected by Zhang Cixi 张次溪 (Zhang,1988),we included a special section in the “Drama” part ofSourcebook(“3.2 Flower-Guides”),with some selections also appearing under “Poetry”,“Fiction”,and “Miscellanies”.

Peking Opera’s transformation into a national art form over the 20th century has made its association with male same-sex prostitution a matter of some sensitivity.While eventually published,our translation ofFengchengpinhua ji凤城品花记,was not received as warmly atRenditionsas our other translations (it was not included inSourcebookas a matter of space).The fact that the glories of Peking Opera had an inglorious side (depending on one’s perspective) has also affected how those working on theater history quoted and translated historical materials.An instructive example can be found in a paper by Wei Shu-chu (魏淑珠),which compares renaissance theater performances with Peking Opera (Wei,1990).Her discussion refutes the common perception that Chinese acting was distant and unemotional,directing readers’ attention to what historical sources say about the experience and space of the theater.A passage from Yang Maojian’s (杨懋建)Menghuasuobu梦华琐簿 (Fragmentary Records from Dreams of Past Glory,1842) is included,describing the seating arrangements in a 19th-century teahouse theater.An ellipsis indicating missing material appears after the passage reaches theguanzuo(官座),or “aristocratic seats” (Wei,1990,p.119),before continuing.What those deleted sentences contained is quite instructive.The first sentence reads:“The [balcony] table second from stage exit is the most expensive because patrons are able to meet the eyes ofdanas they exit from the stage,confirming their intentions” (官座以下场门第二座为最贵，以其搴帘将入时便于掷心卖眼 Stevenson & Wu,2013,p.125).The remaining expurgated material consists of lines of poetry from several roughly contemporary sources that confirm the advantages of theater seats in this position.Omitting the lines of poetry might be understandable in an architectural description; however,the sentence describing actor-patron flirtation was crucial for understanding the theater layout and its relationship to audience experience.Indeed,the ST citation of poetic lines at this point tends to suggest this erotic aspect of theater layout was what was most important for at least one section of this audience—literati men.Back in 1990,readers were kept in the dark about this aspect of the 19th-century Beijing theater experience,and this problem no doubt continues in many publications today.

While I refer toMenghuasuobuas the ST for the example above,the passage included in Wei Shuchu’s paper was not translated directly from that source (i.e.,Menghuasuobuas collected in Zhang Cixi’sQingdai Yandu liyuan shiliao zhengxubian),1Wei was aware of Zhang’s collection (Wei,1990,p.133 n.22).but from Chen Wannai’s (陈万鼐)Yuan-Ming-Qing juqu shi元明清剧曲史 (A History of the Theater of the Yuan,Ming,and Qing,Chen,1980,pp.615-616,as cited in Wei,1990,p.133 n.21).This raises the question of who deleted the missing sentences:were they removed in 1980 by Chen Wannai when compiling his history of the theater,or were they removed by Wei Shuchu when she was translating the passage included in her paper? Wei does not comment on the omission,and I have not been able to access Chen’s book to check.In presenting us with a “mystery”,the omission contains lessons for both anthologists and translators.In tampering with our sources,we assume a great deal about who our readers are and the information they require,and we should acknowledge where omissions or changes have been made,and why.There is no doubt in my mind that the omitted material was removed because of an assumption that,in these “modern” times,Peking Opera’s associations with same-sex desire are part of a (now) “shameful” past that best remains in the past.The more generous interpretation would be that whoever removed the material did not understand the importance of samesex desire in Peking Opera’s development.In either case,the action speaks of the difficult relationship of China’s past to representations of China in the present.

5.Summary lessons:Tracing assumptions

In the 20th century,a series of Western assumptions about same-sex desire became Chinese assumptions.This is not the place to rehearse the history of that influence:in many ways the study of how such assumptions were adapted or “translated” has only just begun (Sang,2003; Wu & Stevenson,2006; Kang,2009).The question of how this history differed between Chinese mainland,Hong Kong,Taiwan,and overseas Chinese communities is still to be addressed,and what has been “established” so far is sure to be revealed as full of historical errors and misreadings.1One example is Kang Wenqing’s reading of Ming literati conceptions of pi (癖,hankering,predilection,obsession)as having pathological connotations (2009,p.21).Kang meticulously draws on etymology and modern sexological publications,but neglects broad consultation of Ming literati writing.We had drawn attention to earlier examples of the dangers and difficulties in a paper published in Tamkang Review (Stevenson & Wu,2004).I address some of my own errors below.One of the hopes we have forSourcebookis that it will contribute to a translation of assumptions in the other direction,or even better,several other directions.

As they are usually hidden,however,assumptions are tricky things to avoid.Meticulous research is not as dependable as continuous meticulousness and reassessment.The careful bilingual reader,for example,might have noticed that our translation of the line fromMenghuasuobucited above silently inserts a reference todan(旦,actors playing female lead) that is not explicit in the ST.In light of my reflections on“tampering”,the insertion should have been indicated,even if what we added was implied as a requirement of the sentence (ST and TT) coming together in a way that made sense.In the sense that signalling of intentions between elite male patrons and actors is what the sentence described,there is no mistake,but to assume further that actor-prostitutes all playeddan(female lead) roles is a misunderstanding,albeit a widespread and modern misunderstanding.2Menghuasuobu employs both ling(ren) (伶[人],“actor/s”) and dan when referring to actors,but ling(ren) is by far the more common appellation.Our understanding of actor-patron flirtation has evolved over recent years to a point where it is now clear that any young actor attracting attention could become sought after,not only those playing female roles (Wu,2017).This point was made clear in the introduction to the“Flower-Guides” section (3.2) ofSourcebook(Stevenson & Wu,2013,p.119),but our anthologized passage fromMenghuasuobureproduced assumptions that were current in research when Cuncun’sHomerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial Chinawas published (Wu,2004).

This example is an opportunity to reflect on the practice of domesticating terminology in terms of what the modern (Western) mind is in the habit of categorizing,a practice possibly more common when writing for theater studies or gender studies publications,but common enough also in Sinological writing on cultural history.I am thinking of terms such as “crossed-dressed”,“transvestite”,“female impersonator”,“male courtesan-actor”,or “male courtesan” to describedanactors,or even actorprostitutes (相公xianggong) in general.It is perhaps understandable that during the earliest cross-cultural attempts to document same-sex desire and gender ambiguity in English TTs,these existing terms were latched upon as ready-to-hand “near equivalents”,and it may even be the case that they are preferable to nakedly descriptive language such as “actor-prostitute” (although it is hard to see how).In choosing a strategy,it is important to be mindful of how such approximations will be re-used or re-translated beyond the context of the TT into the wider discourses of generalisation and assimilation.The 9th-century stage actor in Beijing was not an “impersonator”,but an actor playing a gendered role.Similarly,he was not a“transvestite”,but put on a female costume to act a part.When he met his patrons at restaurants or at his private apartment,he was usually dressed in stylish male couture:extravagant,chic,perhaps feminine,but not female.I don’t wish to be categorical in drawing these distinctions.In most instances they need not be a problem for the translator when translating pre-modern works of literature,largely because literary texts rarely use “terminology” (always precious nuggets when they appear,but not to be read as finally definitive).Terminology is related more closely to explanation than translation.It is in the preparation of translations’ paratexts (prefaces,introductions,footnotes,and dare I say,anthologies) that we mostly do this other “translation” work of introducing our topics into terminological systems that fall outside the text (Qi,2018).Paratextual systems govern and facilitate the text’s consumption,as well as guiding the integration of an ST’s language into that of the TT’s language,even as the flux of language always introduces indeterminacy (Benjamin,1992,p.81).

Sinology may profitably be thought of as such a paratextual system,as may other area studies in general.The philological meticulousness it stakes as its foundation is also its claim to authority.Assessing the impact of philological approaches to translation,which “have remained the norm for translating the native texts of minority and non-Western cultures”,Maria Tymoczko concludes:

Through the silences of the positivist editor and translator,the ambiguities and difficulties of the marginalized text,as well as the fallibilities and uncertainties of the translator,are equally erased.The process perpetuates the panoptic ideal of the imperialist gaze,which confers perfect knowledge on the observer/translator (flawed only by“corruptions” in the source text),at the same time the text to be translated is downgraded in status from a piece of literature to a non-literary work […] inscribing it within a scholarly framework shaped by dominant Western values […] coded into philological practices themselves.(Tymoczko,1999,p.269)

Accuracy and reliability were high on the list of aims forSourcebookwhen we submitted our book proposal to Routledge.It was our feeling that despite a great deal of meticulousness,the Sinological apparatus was getting a great deal wrong about same-sex desire in traditional Chinese culture.In the majority of cases our concerns had to do with judgments regarding same-sex desire in modern Western culture being ventriloquized into Chinese texts from centuries or even millennia ago.And the influence of those dominant Western narratives has been so pervasive globally,that it hardly mattered where a translator or cultural historian had grown up (Chow,1993),or even what positions they held regarding same-sex desire.Working against that unidirectional flow has particular implications for what “accuracy and reliability” should mean.For our project it meant a desire to have perspectives from a different past,and make the present’s blindness visible to itself.Indeed,it is refreshing to see how non-official genres of pre-modern writing show little concern for fixing judgments—leaving room for personal ethics and taste.

“To read existing translations against the grain,” writes Tejaswini Niranjana,“is also to read colonial historiography from a post-colonial perspective,and a critic alert to the ruses of colonial discourse can help uncover what Walter Benjamin calls the ‘second tradition,’ the history of resistance […] [t]he postcolonial desire tore-translateis linked to the desire tore-write history” (1992,p.172,original emphasis).Without in any way wanting to take away from the painful acts of remembering to which Niranjana refers,we would be foolish to persuade ourselves that epistemic violence has come to an end for minority and non-Western cultures.In this case,to initiate new translations against the grain is linked to a desire to rewrite the future.Is an anthropologist “a critic alert to the ruses of colonial discourse”,or a collaborator in those ruses,as anthropology’s own self-critique has exposed?1Anthropology is of course not alone in this association; as Edward Said notes in Cuture and Imperialism,“the study of ‘comparative literature’ originated in the period of high European imperialism and is irrecusably linked to it” (1994,p.43).As Cuncun led us into the texts,I was conscious of our being shadowed by familiar,ready-to-hand ideas that could very easily have blocked access to the different world that was opening up.If we have indeed succeeded in opening up that different world (or worlds),it will be in no small part because the translation was a collaboration led by someone with many years’ reading and interpreting the sources and their contexts.As we wrote in the introduction,“The main advantage of side-by-side collaboration,as we see it,was the sense of immediacy,colour,space and tone created in an act of communication that wasvoicedandheard,a cultural historian and an anthropologist each asking questions of the other (and the texts) as the hermeneutic horizon of the past was brought to life” (Stevenson & Wu,2013,p.7).Thanks to Cuncun’s ability in most cases to “sight-read”the sources,often texts she had read previously,this process did often feel as if I was being introduced to a living textual world.2By “sight-read” here I mean an ability analogous to sight-reading or sight-singing in musical performance,which is to say an ability to accurately read and voice aloud fluently without preparation,or,in this case,without recourse to dictionaries,parsing,or other intermediate steps that would “hinder the flux of [the] performance” (Schütz,1951,p.85).Schütz argued that musicians’ ability to share their skills in this immediate way created space for an experience of mutuality.Reading and hearing the texts as Cuncun read or paraphrased aloud produced a very different sense of space and action as I translated and typed what came to mind in my reading-hearing alongside her.Re-reading and re-checking always followed,but our translations benefited from the living rhythms that this style of side-by-side work injected into our first drafts.

From the beginning of theSourcebookproject,we were mindful of how in the philological mode“the text to be translated is downgraded in status from a piece of literature to a non-literary work”,as Tymoczko put it in the passage just cited.Academic citation in general does extraordinary violence—dismemberment—to the texts on which it draws,on top of the violence done by translation.In setting as one of our aims the making of translations that preserve the aesthetic qualities evident in the original sources,we were not pretending to be able to produce texts that would move or delight readers in the way the STs had once done; more modestly,we sought to draw attention to a remarkably sophisticated and complex literary tradition free of culturally institutionalized forms of homophobia (Furth,1988,pp.6-7).An anthology was an appropriate “venue” through which to draw attention to a story of literary continuity.TheRenditionsapproach of keeping academic apparatus to a minimum aimed at allowing readers freedom to focus on the literary qualities of the selections.Sourcebookis not translation in the philological mode;instead,we sought a particular approach to academic research given shape through the side-by-side procedure of our companion translation team.

As translators of late imperial Chinese literature,Cuncun and I,both together and separately,also research and publish critical articles,chapters,and books that can be described as literary or cultural history.We therefore appear to be “researcher-translators” in the sense that this category has been applied by Rick Qi to David T.Roy (1933-2016),the translator of a new five-volume English edition ofThe Plum in the Golden Vase or,Chin P’ing Mei(Roy,1993-2013).1I suspect this literary translation use of “researcher-translator” needs to be differentiated from another common use where it denotes a member of a research team who interprets during interviews or otherwise translates information needed for a project (typically in social science research).As it stands,the hyphenated category of “researchertranslator” can include a number of different situations and methods:in his description of Roy as a researcher-translator,I interpret Qi as describing a “scholar-translator” who,in translating a monumental work of literature,took up a task requiring decades of exhaustive research in interaction withJin-ology and graduate students (Qi,2018,p.6).The book’s five volumes provide the TT while also documenting the research that supported its production (providing textual history,evidence for translation decisions,and cultural notes for the reader).As told above,the way research and translation are interwoven in the production and backstory ofSourcebookis very different fromThe Plum in the Golden Vase,but the category “researcher-translator” allows me to conclude by making a plea for the recognition of literary translation as research,particularly in area studies.This should be the case whether or not it comes with enormous scholarly apparatus attached.(In some parts of the world,and I am thinking first of Australia,national research funding bodies make it clear that they do not fund translation,and nor do they measure translation as research output.)2Translation in the philological mode may attract funding if the project also produces a body of text critical studies.Sourcebook did benefit in part from Australian Research Council Discovery Grant funding by being associated with a different project,with translation of dramatic works included as a minor part of that project overall.Being both“edited” (another loaded term) and “translated” meant having the book recognized in “research output” accounting was a major struggle.Firstly,translation forms the bedrock of area studies; in any other field,its relationship to other forms of research progress would mean it was classed as “basic” or “foundational research”.Secondly,the objection that translation cannot,by definition,represent original research only betrays continuing ignorance of the translation process and its products.Thirdly,particularly in the English-speaking world,the entire humanities area would be a very desolate place without the fund of translated literature and theory on which it draws.And fourthly,in a great deal of academic writing in area studies,what otherwise passes as analysis consists of paraphrases and condensations that take unforgivable shortcuts.In addition to these arguments against the standard objections,we could also add that the knowledge,experience,and perspective gained from extensive engagement in literary or historical translation nourish and support researchers in their ongoing engagement in cross-cultural inquiry.