From Proposal to Policy: China's Translation Policymaking in the 1860s

Abstract

Although much scholarly attention has been focused on the nature and purpose of translation policy, where and how such policy came into being has rarely been specified. Based on an investigation of the network of memorials from the 1860s in China, this paper traces how translation jumped onto the national policy agenda and was gradually popularised, with a detailed contextual analysis of the vehicles, makers, processes, and effects of translation policy. It is found that, in the 1860s, two particular memorials played a decisive and formative role as an umbrella policy in translation policy, which was supported, adjusted, echoed, or even refuted by a series of other memorials, and that these memorials together shaped the general translation policies of the time and indicate a complex process of conflict, compromise, and consensus. It is also argued that such archival material as memorials helps to expose the process of making translation policy and that the close sifting of fragmentary archival sources and the reconstructing of a network may facilitate the understanding of translation history.