Translating the East: an introduction

The project

The essays collected in this special issue address a common concern related to the translatability of cultures and, in particular, the translatability of Chinese culture into the European culture. In so doing, they aim to shed new light in two different but related areas of research: the history of Sino-European intellectual encounters and the philological analysis of Jesuit translations.

The growing influence of China and Chinese culture in recent decades has given new impetus to the study of the origins of Sino-Western exchange in the early modern period. The main protagonists of Europe’s first intellectual encounters with late Ming and early Qing China were Jesuit missionaries, who sought to convert China to Catholicism by adapting the cultural and intellectual traditions of Confucianism to Christianity. Their accommodation – the attempt to adapt one culture to another – was based on a secularised interpretation of Confucianism as a political and ethical philosophy devoid of superstition.

However, in this attempt to adapt to Chinese culture, European culture itself was transformed: the Jesuits’ idealisation of the Chinese state as the perfect realisation of Confucian virtue influenced the development of Enlightenment political theory and contributed significantly to the emergence of Enlightenment values such as secularism and religious tolerance.¹, ² This image of Confucianism as a form of civil religion or natural ethics, devoid of dogma and religious authority, quickly spread through European courts and thinkers. Authors such as Jean Baptiste de Boyer and Marquis d’Argens (1704–1771) in France, and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) in Italy explored the role of Confucianism within the Chinese empire, presenting it as a positive model for state and society. The Chinese empire was often seen as a prototype of legal or virtuous despotism, in which Confucianism played a crucial role in ensuring the paternal rule of emperors. The concept of philosopher-kings, reminiscent of Chinese emperors, quickly gained traction among European courts, spreading from John Webb (1611–1672) to Christian Wolff (1679–1754) and Jean Deschamps (1709–1769). This influence of a Chinese model was not limited to the ruler, but also to the economy of the states. François Quesnay’s Despotisme de la Chine (1767) presented the Chinese empire as the ideal model state and economic system for physiocracy, the first scientific economic school developed in Europe.³

Europe first came into contact with classical Confucian texts, and thus with Chinese culture, through Jesuit translations. The Jesuits initially translated these texts to provide linguistic instruction for their missionary activities in China, but their translations served as the main vehicle for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers to form their own image of China. As early as the late sixteenth century, Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) included in his Biblioteca Selecta (1593) a presentation of these classics alongside an excerpt of the translation of the Daxue, the Great Learning, by Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607). This initial effort was followed in the seventeenth century by a growing number of translated works, reprints, as well as citations of these translations of the classics by the Jesuit missionaries. These citations spanned various disciplines, appearing in different type of texts, from Melchisédech Thévenot’s collection of travel literature (1672)⁴ to Nathanael Vincent’s annotated sermon (1674).⁵

Furthermore, the printing of translations of classics such as the Analects (Lunyu) and the Great Learning (Daxue) by Prospero Intorcetta (1625–1696) and Inácio da Costa (1603–1666) in the Sapientia Sinica (1662), and the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhong yong) by Intorcetta in the Sinarum Scientia politico-moralis (1667), which included both Chinese characters alongside their romanisation and Latin translation, significantly contributed to the spread of Chinese characters in Europe.⁶

These issues have been explored as part of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project entitled “Transforming the East: Jesuit Translations of the Confucian Classics”.⁷ Seeking to reassess Europe’s first encounter with Chinese culture through Jesuit translations of the Confucian canon from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, scholars from the University of Sydney and Sun Yat-sen University are working to provide the least fragmentary history of the dissemination of these translations in Europe.

To better understand the intellectual encounters between Enlightenment and Chinese thought,⁸ the study of the philosophical and political climate in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe must be reconciled with the philological study of Jesuit translations of Chinese classics. Europe’s transition to modernity can only be properly understood and assessed by uncovering the ways in which Jesuits altered and transformed Chinese thought in their translations to fit European discourse, and by examining how these translations were disseminated.

The main challenge of such an endeavour lies in the need for collaboration that brings together specialised linguistic and cultural knowledge from a range of disciplines. Studies of Jesuit translations and China in early modern Europe have tended to focus on particular national contexts, despite the fact that Jesuit translations of Chinese classics usually involved missionaries from very different national backgrounds.⁹ It is not surprising, therefore, that studies on the influence of Jesuit Sinology have tended to focus on the emergence of chinoiserie and Orientalism, and less often on the philological background to literary and philosophical exchange.¹⁰

This collection of articles prepared for the Intellectual History Review is the first collective publication of the Australia-based research team mentioned above, with the addition of a group of selected scholars invited to address the same concerns. The project from which this collection emerges has three main aims. The first is the timely reconstruction of the Jesuit translations of the Confucian corpus from 1590 to 1773 and beyond, mapping the authors and circulation of the works in the European context. The second is to shed light on how the translations were read by contemporary European thinkers and what kind of impact they had on the course of Enlightenment history. The third is to create a database containing the first comprehensive (though always subject to addition) list of Jesuit translations of Confucian classics into European language translations, starting with those into Latin. Specifically, this collection is a contribution to the first objective.

The project takes an interdisciplinary and multilingual approach that draws on different fields: philology, history of the book, intellectual history, and digital methods. New knowledge about Jesuit translations and the creation of the image of China in Enlightenment Europe can only be achieved by overcoming traditional disciplinary barriers. In particular, previous attempts to map Jesuit translations have predominantly been due to the efforts of individual scholars specialising in sectorially circumscribed fields such as “Western philosophy”, “Chinese philosophy”, “European literature”, “intellectual history”, “history of ideas”, and “philology”. It should be added that the translations in question are, other than in Latin, in languages such as French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese, as well as English. While individual specialists can acquire the rudiments of all these fields and languages, it is difficult for them individually to master the language skills and interdisciplinary knowledge required to frame this cultural exchange in all its complexity.

The team that made this collection possible has been selected because it consists of specialists in the disciplines mentioned before, along with sinology, Tibetology, Continental and Chinese philosophy, missionary history, and history of religions.

The research team

In more or less running order, Daniel Canaris’s work focuses on Neapolitan Enlightenment as well as Sino-European encounters in the early modern period and has published the first English edition of Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu shilu (The True Record of the Lord of Heaven, 1584), which, apart from being the first work in Chinese language published by a European, elaborates sophisticated strategies to accommodate Christianity to Chinese culture and to promote Sino-Western exchange.¹¹

With Thierry Meynard, Canaris has also contributed insights into early modern debates on the translatability of thought by editing Niccolò Longobardo’s Brief Response to Controversies over Shangdi, Tianshen and Linghun (1620s),¹² a contentious report that altered the history of the Jesuit China mission, as well as the first treatise of François Noël’s Philosophia Sinica (Chinese philosophy, 1711),¹³ in which the Flemish Jesuit proposes an original exposition on Chinese metaphysics, ethics, and rituals.

Thierry Meynard is the author of a number of other pioneering studies in the field of Jesuit Studies and of the reception of Chinese philosophy in Europe, such as his ground-breaking English editions of the Confucius Sinarum philosophus (1687),¹⁴ the one book that for about two hundred years provided Western intellectuals such as Leibniz and Voltaire access to Confucius and Chinese thought in Latin, and the edition of Michele Ruggieri’s 1590 first Spanish translation of Confucius’s Four Books (with Roberto Villasante).¹⁵

Andrew Benjamin is a philosopher whose work can be situated in the European philosophical tradition. He has written extensively about translation, beginning with his 1989 monograph Translation and the Nature of Philosophy: A New Theory of Words.¹⁶ Significantly, in his paper, he connects his thinking on translation to a new dimension in his work, namely an original engagement with political theology.

Zhu Hailin has worked on the transmission of scholastic thought in late Ming China, focusing on the Huanyou quan 寰有詮 (Explanation of the Great Being, 1628), a treatise on cosmology jointly prepared by the Portuguese Jesuit Francisco Furtado and the Chinese scholar Li Zhizao.

Giulia Falato is a Sinologist, whose research interests lie in the history of Sino-Western cultural relations, with a focus on exchanges in the fields of pedagogy, moral philosophy, and lexical innovation. She published a monograph on Alfonso Vagnone S.J.’s Tongyou jiaoyu 童幼教育 (On the Education of Children, c. 1632) and papers on education and the representation of children in Chinese literary traditions, as well as about the Jesuit translations strategies in late Ming and early Qing catechisms.¹⁷

Xueying Wang is a patristic scholar and comparative theologian whose recent research focuses on Catholicism in China, with a particular interest in the Chinese Rites Controversy (c. 1630–1742). Her work pays special attention to the writings by Chinese Catholics, showing different perspectives on how the Confucian heritage of Chinese Catholic intellectuals can be harmonised with their Catholic faith, and on the challenges of translating Catholic concepts into Chinese.

Jim Rheingans is a Tibetologist with interests in religious and intellectual history of the Tibetan cultural area between the twelfth and the seventeenth century, in Tibetan and Indo-Tibetan literary traditions, and in the reception of Tibetan and Buddhist texts in Europe.

Collegially, the research group brings together expertise in intellectual history from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and cultural exchanges between China and Europe. The interests and research of individual members also touch on the specific themes of the Jesuit mission and its sources, both printed and archival, in European and Chinese languages, as well as expertise in philological analysis and critical edition of missionary texts.

The translatability of cultures

The Jesuits’ efforts to translate Western learning into Chinese and Chinese classics into European languages were based on a belief in the translatability of cultures. This is not to say that there were no differences among them in finding the equivalences in the target language. Successive generations of Jesuit missionaries came to China, and most of them became proficient in the Chinese language and immersed themselves in Chinese culture. The more they understood the cultural context of the language, the more they became aware of the challenges of linguistic translation. For the Jesuits, translation is no longer just a movement between languages, but a movement between cultures. The linguistic choices made by the Jesuit translators reflect their understanding of the cultural contexts from which the texts originate or into which they are translated. The challenges of cultural translation faced by the Jesuits are many. One of these challenges is also the most basic of all translation tasks: to find lexical equivalents in the target language. As is well known in translation practice, the target language may not have the exact equivalent word of the original. Furthermore, the original text may have restrictive meanings that limit the translator’s choices. For example, the word “sanctity” not only has a restrictive theological meaning but has also undergone significant changes in usage. As Wang’s and Canaris’s contributions show, how the Christian concept of “sanctity” was conveyed in Chinese was influenced not only by linguistic and cultural factors, but also by strategic choices on the part of the translator.

The translation practices of the Jesuits could be classified as “cultural translation”, because they focused on the recipient of their translation and did not “insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source language context in order to understand the message”.¹⁸ As commented by the Italian Jesuit Ludovico Buglio, who translated parts of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologica into Chinese, the Jesuit translators were fully aware of the difficulties posed by linguistic and cultural differences: languages “differ from land to land, and words are limited; after repeated endeavours, new words are added, and the Pars prima is accomplished with great effort. Yet I dare not say that I have exhausted the meaning of the original text”.¹⁹ Faced with the question of “foreignization” or “domestication” – to borrow Venuti’s concepts²⁰ – the Jesuit translator predominately chose the strategy of domestication or accommodation. It was precisely this strategy of accommodation that left the Jesuit translators open to attack by those who emphasised the difference between cultures and thus foregrounded the question of un/translatability. As the essays in this special issue will show, the major linguistic choices of the Jesuit translators were deeply influenced by their strategic decision to adapt to the target culture and by their belief in the translatability between cultures. The controversies over their translations, which famously culminated in the so-called Chinese Rites Controversy, are politically motivated, even when fought out through linguistic arguments, as will be demonstrated by Meynard's article in this special issue.

The contributions

In From sanctus to shengren: mediating Christian and Chinese concepts of human excellence in early modern China, Daniel Canaris presents a microhistory of early Jesuit attempts to translate the Christian concept of sanctus into Chinese and reflects on the significance of these translation choices for the development of Jesuit missionary strategy. The term sanctus had a complex history in Christianity, referring to saints canonised for their heroic virtues, and to objects or persons designated for religious use. Initially, Ruggieri and Ricci experimented with various Chinese religious traditions, including Daoism and Buddhism, before settling on Confucianism, which they found most compatible with Christianity and the Chinese elite. They chose the Confucian term shengren (聖人), which means “sage”, to translate sanctus. This term in was associated with moral and intellectual excellence, epitomised by figures such as Confucius. However, Ricci’s use of shengren implied a degree of equivalence between Christian saints and Confucian sages, especially Confucius, who was seen as a shengren par excellence. Ricci navigated this by emphasising Confucius’s role as a wise teacher and moral guide rather than a divine figure, to align Confucian practices with Christian beliefs without endorsing them as religious rites. This choice of translation reflects the broader Jesuit strategy of accommodation, which sought to integrate Christian teachings into the Chinese cultural framework. While these early efforts laid the groundwork for ongoing dialogues between Christianity and Chinese thought, Ricci’s strategy was not without controversy, which intensified over time and led to the famous Chinese Rites Controversy.

In his Translation, dialogue and conversation: Malebranche's entretien d'un philosophe chrétien, et d'un philosophe chinois, Andrew Benjamin explores the complex relationship between translation and philosophical thought, and considers a particular form of philosophical dialogue, which includes both De Pace Fidei (1453) by the German humanist Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) and the Entretien d'un philosophe chrétien, et d'un philosophe chinois (Dialogue between a Christian Philosopher and a Chinese Philosopher on the Existence and Nature of God, 1708) by French Cartesian philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715). Although China played a marginal role in Malebranche’s thought, he wrote his Entretien after his conversation with Artus de Lionne (1655–1713), a missionary of the Société des Missions étrangères de Paris, who was working in China and who wanted to use Malebranche’s influence against the Jesuits in the Rites Controversy. Malebranche had no understanding of the Chinese language and relied entirely on de Lionne, whose “misconception” he tried to correct in his Entretien. Malebranche ignored additional sources in European languages and was more concerned with the internal validity of his own arguments, which made the notion of li compatible with the Christian concept of divinity. In addressing Malebranche’s Entretien, Benjamin analyses the case of a Eurocentric theologian who tackles the issue of translation as a movement between languages. Malebranche’s text, while seemingly engaging with the historical context of the Chinese Rites Controversy, reveals an underlying philosophical anthropology and political theology, where translation is not merely about linguistic exchange but about a deeper synthesis of ideas. Benjamin points out that Malebranche’s work cannot be separated from the history of seeking concord. His view of law involves its absolutisation, eliminating the space between law and enactment. According to Benjamin, Malebranche sees in the translation process a pervasive sense of sameness, grounded in a universal becoming-Christian. In equating the Confucian li with God, Malebranche emphasizes the conformity of God’s actions with the law, maintaining the centrality of divine word and immediate adoration. Through an exploration of Malebranche’s philosophical position, Benjamin’s essay demonstrates how translation, both linguistic and philosophical, involves complex interactions between sameness and difference, immediacy and mediacy, ultimately reflecting broader theological and anthropological concerns.

Zhu Hailin’s essay Transwriting in Aleni’s Xingxue cushu in communicating human nature philosophy between the West and late Ming China deals with the translation strategies employed by Giulio Aleni (1582–1649), one of the most influential Jesuits in late Ming China, following in the footsteps of Matteo Ricci. Aleni’s book Xingxue cushu 性學觕述 (A Brief Introduction to the Study of Human Nature, 1646) is a significant work that exemplifies the Jesuits’ efforts to introduce Western natural philosophy to Chinese literati during the late Ming dynasty. The foundation of the book lies in the Cursus Conimbricensis, a series of commentaries on Aristotle’s works prepared by Jesuits at the University of Coimbra. Zhu defines Aleni’s translation approach as “transwriting” and argues that the success of Aleni’s translation lies in a linguistic strategy which involves not just translating, but also adaptation and creative rewriting to resonate with the cultural and intellectual context of the target audience. According to Zhu, Aleni’s choice of his translation strategy is driven by the complexity of his situation: Aleni must maintain his Christian missionary identity while making Western ideas accessible to Chinese scholars. His solution is similar to that of Ricci in that he chose to adapt Christian doctrines to align with Chinese philosophical and literary conventions. Instead of literary translation, Aleni reorganised the content and added new questions to address Chinese concerns. He also composed parts of the text to interpret Western concepts clearly for a Chinese readership. Furthermore, Aleni used Neo-Confucian terms to express Western concepts, often reinterpreting them creatively. For example, he coined the term lingxing (intellective soul) to describe the human soul, integrating it into the Chinese intellectual framework. Throughout his translation, Aleni included numerous references to Chinese classics and used argumentation methods familiar to Chinese readers, such as analogies and metaphors, rather than Western scholastic arguments. This made complex Western ideas more accessible to his audience. Aleni’s success in Xingxue cushu highlights the importance of the translator’s understanding of the target culture’s intellectual traditions and literary conventions and showcases the effectiveness of transwriting as a strategy for cross-cultural communication. By creatively adapting Western concepts to fit the Chinese intellectual and cultural context, Aleni was able to introduce Western ideas about human nature in a manner that was accessible and acceptable to Chinese scholars and facilitate dialogue between different intellectual traditions.

Thierry Meynard’s article Dictionaries as authorities? The problematic use of Chinese dictionaries by missionaries in the Rites Controversy provides another illuminating example of how the opposing sides of the Rites Controversy employed linguistic strategies to set political and theological differences. The article examines the use of dictionaries in the Chinese Rites Controversy by the Jesuits and friars from other religious orders to support their interpretation of Chinese rituals as either religious or secular. The Jesuits’ strategy involved embedding their interpretations within their translations of Chinese classics and their commentaries, presenting the rites as non-religious and compatible with Christianity. In contrast, friars such as Antonio de Santa María Caballero (1602–1669) and Domingo Fernández de Navarrete (c. 1618–1689) argued from a linguistic standpoint, using dictionaries such as the Zihui compiled by Mei Yingzuo and the Guwen zikao by Du Yu to assert that the rites were inherently religious.

Meynard’s analysis focuses on the three most contested terms: miao (temple), ji (sacrifice), and sheng (sage). The controversy over the term miao exemplifies the broader debate. Santa María insisted that miao meant “temple” in a religious sense, whether referring to Buddhist, Confucian, or ancestral temples. The Jesuit Francesco Brancati (1607–1671) criticised this narrow interpretation, arguing for the polysemy of the term based on the Zihui dictionary, which included both secular and religious meanings. Similarly, regarding the term ji (sacrifice), Santa María argued from the Zihui’s definitions that ji inherently had a religious character, including its use in Christian contexts. Brancati countered that ji could also have non-religious meanings, such as a civil examination of rituals. The term sheng (sage) also featured in the controversy. Morales argued that sheng should not be used to describe Confucius, as if it implied a sanctity incompatible with Christian definitions.

Brancati acknowledged that Christianity had adapted the Chinese term but maintained that its traditional Chinese usage was purely human and intellectual, not religiously exclusive. Meynard’s analysis reveals the profound cultural and theological challenges faced by Catholic missionaries in China. The friars relied on dictionaries to prove the religious nature of Chinese rites, while the Jesuits’ more nuanced interpretations underscored the polysemy and contextual nature of Chinese terms. While arguing in linguistic terms, the debates reveal a fundamental cultural issue, which was the imposition of a Western dichotomy of religious versus secular on Chinese traditions, a concept largely foreign to Chinese understanding. This linguistic clash ultimately prevented a definitive resolution, reflecting the broader difficulties of cross-cultural religious translation.

Giulia Falato’s essay examines François Noël’s (1651–1729) translation of Zhu Xi’s Elementary learning (Xiaoxue 小學, 1187), with particular emphasis on the chapter about the Five Human Relationships (wulun 五倫), which Noël translates as “Quintuplex humanae conditionis ordo”. Noël’s Sinensis Imperii Libri Classici Sex (Six Classics of the Chinese Empire), Historica Notitia Rituum ac Ceremoniarum Sinicarum, and Philosophia Sinica were published against the background of the intensifying Rites Controversy, which forced Jesuits to even more persistently argue for the compatibility between Confucianism and Christianity.

Falato argues that Noël’s aim was not to Christianise Confucian teachings but to genuinely share the true virtues embedded in Chinese canonical literature, making the Sinensis Imperii an effective example of cultural translation. The Five Human Relationships (wulun 五倫) emphasise hierarchical social stability through affection, righteousness, role differentiation, proper order, and fidelity. These relationships are deeply rooted in the Confucian virtue of benevolence (ren 仁). Noël uses these relationships to draw analogies between Confucian and Christian ethical systems, arguing for their compatibility and integrating them into Jesuit moral and religious publications. He clarified in the “Foreword to the Reader” that he prioritised conveying the author’s intent over a literal translation to avoid obscurity, demonstrating his role as an early cultural mediator.

Falato’s analysis of Noël’s translation Parvulorum Schola (小学) convincingly demonstrates the continuity of the accommodation strategy of the Jesuits from Ricci, and the effectiveness of cultural translation in enabling cross-cultural understanding that transcends mere theological arguments. Noël’s translations inspired the French Les Livres classiques de l'empire de la Chine (1784) by François-André-Adrien Pluquet and were appreciated by intellectuals like Christian Wolff and other German and French philosophers. They played a crucial role in the cultural exchange of philosophical ideas between China and Europe.

Xueying Wang’s article The translation of saints and the Confucian discourse of sages in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China: the examples of Alfonso Vagnone, Zhang Xingyao and Yan Mo also examines the translation of sanctus, more specifically the Catholic concept of saints. While Canaris focuses his analysis on the translation of early Jesuits, Wang looks into the translations and discussions of Ricci’s follower Vagnone and on notable Chinese Catholics during the Rites Controversy, namely Zhang Xingyao and Yan Mo.

Wang’s paper provides a detailed exploration of the evolution and nuances surrounding the translation and usage of the term sheng (聖) within Chinese Catholicism from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century and reveals how this term, initially introduced by Matteo Ricci, evolved amidst theological, cultural, and linguistic debates within the Chinese context. As discussed by Canaris, Matteo Ricci played a pivotal role in establishing sheng as the translation for Catholic saints in his seminal work, Tianzhu shiyi (天主實義). Ricci portrayed saints as spiritual authorities analogous to ancient Confucian sages who authored canonical texts. By framing saints as moral exemplars and evangelists akin to Confucian intellectual giants, Ricci sought to demonstrate the compatibility between Catholicism and Confucianism.

Alfonso Vagnone and subsequent Jesuit missionaries continued Ricci’s approach, using sheng to refer to saints in their writings. Vagnone’s Tianzhu shengjiao shengren xingshi (天主聖教聖人行實) and Shengmu xingshi (聖母行實) further developed the concept of saints without rigidly linking them to Confucian intellectual tradition. Simultaneously, Chinese Catholic intellectuals engaged with the term sheng. Han Lin, for instance, employed shengren to denote Confucian sages, thus emphasising their moral teachings and suggesting a continuity between Confucian ethics and Catholic doctrine.

Zhang Xingyao viewed Catholic saints and Confucian sages as equivalent figures in moral cultivation but within their respective religious frameworks. His approach highlighted potential harmony between Catholicism and Confucianism in cultivating virtues and ethical conduct.

The most significant contributions were made by Yan Mo, who outlined the polysemous nature of sheng and emphasised its dual meanings within Chinese Catholic discourse: firstly, as saints recognised by the Catholic Church for their intercessory role in religious practice; and secondly, as Confucian sages revered for their moral virtue in secular rituals. Yan Mo’s approach to reconcile these dual uses of sheng is reflective of the intensifying Rites Controversy and its repercussions in China, but also points to the possibility of cross-cultural exchange. Overall, the evolution of sheng reflects broader attempts within Chinese Catholicism to navigate theological complexities, integrate foreign concepts with indigenous cultural frameworks, and negotiate identities amidst changing intellectual and religious landscapes. The Catholic Church eventually took the route suggested by Yan Mo in the twentieth century.

The last essay of this collection, The early days of Tibetan Studies in Europe: some textual and historical considerations regarding I.J. Schmidt (1779–1843) and his German translation of The Wise and the Foolish, by Jim Rheingans, introduces an important translator of Tibetan and Mongolian sources in the nineteenth century and contributes to a broader understanding of Buddhist translations in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Isaak Jakob Schmidt (1779–1843), originally a Moravian accountant from Amsterdam, was a key figure in early Mongolian and Tibetan Studies in Europe. He translated the history of the Eastern Mongols (i.e. Sagang sečen’s Erdeni-yin tobči) into German under the title Geschichte der Ostmongolen und ihres Fürstenhauses. Published in 1829, this translation made a crucial Mongolian historical source available for European researchers for the first time. Schmidt’s work on Tibetan grammar (1839) and a dictionary (1841) involved using various glossaries and Buryat informants. His translation of The Wise and the Foolish in 1843 marked his last major work. The Wise and the Foolish contains narratives that illustrate Buddhist doctrines. Schmidt’s translation introduced these stories to European audiences, enhancing understanding of Tibetan Buddhism. While operating in a completely different historical and academic context than the Jesuits in China, Schmidt’s translation reveals similarities to the translation endeavours of the Jesuit missionaries in China. As with the Jesuits, Schmidt’s translation also aims to provide study material of Tibetan literature for Europeans and to render Buddhist beliefs accessible to European readers. Rheingans traces the sources for Schmidt’s translation, noting that he was filling gaps in the Tibetan original with sources from a Mongolian text. While updated translations are needed today, Schmidt’s translations continue to be an important resource for learners and scholars in Tibetan and Buddhist studies, standing as another successful example of cultural translation.

Conclusions

In summary, the essays in this collection reveal a wide range of historical and cultural exchanges between East and West from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century through the translation of canonical texts. The efforts of Jesuit missionaries in China to bring Western learning into Chinese and, conversely, Chinese classics into European languages illustrate that, for the Jesuits, translation was not a mere linguistic exercise. The various facets of translation practice, from the adaptation of Christian terms to fit Confucian frameworks to philosophical dialogues, are inseparable from deeper theological and anthropological concerns, often determining the translator’s choice of methods and approaches. Their strategic linguistic choices, often involving cultural adaptation, illustrate the complexity of translating not just words but entire cultural contexts.

The Jesuits pioneered a method of “domestication”, tailoring translated materials to resonate with the target audience’s cultural values, ensuring comprehension and fostering acceptance. Beyond the Jesuits’ experience, the collection explores other noteworthy translation efforts. Nicolas Malebranche’s attempt to reconcile Christianity with Chinese philosophy, despite its Eurocentric bias, and Isaak Jakob Schmidt’s translations of Tibetan and Mongolian texts exemplify the complexities and rewards of cross-cultural intellectual exchange.

The various translation practices discussed by the contributors to this special issue demonstrate the potential and limitations of translation as a tool for cross-cultural communication. By creatively adapting and reinterpreting concepts to fit new cultural contexts, translators like the Jesuit missionaries facilitated a profound exchange of ideas and contributed to a deeper understanding and appreciation of different cultures. The success of their work highlights the importance of cultural sensitivity, strategic adaptation, and a belief in the possibility of dialogue between different intellectual traditions.

Taken together, the essays selected for this special issue highlight the complex relationship between language and culture. The translators’ belief in the translatability of cultures, coupled with their linguistic expertise and strategic accommodation of cultural differences, enabled them to bridge significant cultural divides and contribute to a richer, more nuanced understanding between Western and Chinese intellectual traditions. These translations have not only conveyed religious and philosophical ideas but also fostered a deeper appreciation of the complexity and richness of different cultural contexts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Both authors wish to thank Valentina Bottanelli and Daniel Canaris, who read a draft version of this editorial as well as parts of the special issue and provided valuable suggestions.

2 Rule, “The Religious Other as Perceived by the Chinese and by Early Western Missionaries”.

3 Davis, “China, the Confucian Ideal, and the European Age of Enlightenment”.

4 Thévenot, Relations de divers voyages curieux. On Thévenot as editor of travel literature see Benedetti, “Lorenzo Magalotti e le Notizie varie dell'Imperio della China (1697)”, 150–168.

5 Vincent, The Right Notion of Honour. On Vincent, see Jenkinson, “Nathanael Vincent and Confucius's ‘Great Learning' in Restoration England”.

6 See Paternicò, “Translating the Master”, 95–102.

7 ARC DP210100458: https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/NCGP/Web/Grant/Grant/DP210100458

8 Which, of course, means building on a series of previous studies. A list touching upon the major ones only would include the following: Mungello, Curious Land; Gascoigne, The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia; Israel, Admiration of China and Classical Chinese Thought; Li, Confucius and the Early Enlightenment in Germany; Kow, China in Early Enlightenment Political Thought.

9 See, for instance, Brandt and Purdy, China in the German Enlightenment; Wu, Traduire la Chine au XVIIIe siècle.

10 App, The Birth of Orientalism.

11 Canaris, Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu shilu.

12 Meynard and Canaris, A Brief Response on the Controversies.

13 Noël, Philosophia sinica tribus tractatibus.

14 Meynard, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687); Meynard, The Jesuit Reading of Confucius.

15 Meynard and Villasante, La filosofía moral de Confucio por Michele Ruggieri.

16 Benjamin, Translation and the Nature of Philosophy.

17 Falato, Alfonso Vagnone’s Tongyou Jiaoyu.

18 Nida, Toward a Science of Translating, 159.

19 Po-Chia Hsia, “The Catholic mission and translations in China, 1583–1700”, 48.

20 Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 19f.