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Friday, November 10, 2017, 17:29
Coping with a royal challenge
By Tang Hoi-chiu
Friday, November 10, 2017, 17:29 By Tang Hoi-chiu

The Commercial Press in HK recently published a 10-volume English encyclopedia of some of the finest items housed in Beijing’s Palace Museum. Tang Hoi-chiu shares his experience of translating the text from the original Chinese.

The 60-volume compendium of the treasures of the Palace Museum, published by Hong Kong’s The Commercial Press, served as the primary source material for the new series in English. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Editor’s note: The former chief curator of Hong Kong Museum of Art, Tang Hoi-chiu, translated three of the 10-volume English encyclopedia of Beijing’s Palace Museum collection highlights, published recently by Hong Kong’s The Commercial Press. In the following article Tang describes the nitty-gritty of handling a particularly detailed and complicated source material and how he worked round the challenges of translating ethno-cultural specificities rooted in Chinese antiquity into English. 

In the fourth year of the Yongle period (1402-1424), Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) ordered the building of a new palace in Beijing (then known as Beiping). The project took 14 years to complete and was named the Forbidden City. The Chinese capital was moved there from Nanjing subsequently. 

In 1644 the Manchus conquered China. The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) replaced Ming rule. However, the Forbidden City was retained as the royal palace. It remained the center of the Chinese empire and administration until its downfall brought about by the Xinhai Revolution in 1911. Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China, lived in the Forbidden City until he was expelled in 1924. In 1925, the Forbidden City became home to the Palace Museum.

As the capital of the Imperial power, the Forbidden City had been turned into a repository of the finest Chinese art and artifacts, particularly since the Ming Dynasty. These became part of the Palace Museum collection. In recognition of its unique architectural features, historical significance and the rich collection of royal memorabilia and treasures of Chinese art in its vaults, the Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage site by the UNESCO in 1987. 

Currently the Palace Museum has around 1.8 million collection items, including pieces of art and artifacts picked from different provinces in China and also received through donations. These include fine specimens of modern and contemporary Chinese art. Select items from the collection are often exhibited in the museum premises and loaned to museums elsewhere in China and overseas. 

Hong Kong’s The Commercial Press published a detailed illustrated catalogue of the Palace Museum holdings — The Complete Collections of Treasures of the Palace Museum in 60 volumes. The project took 14 years to complete and have drawn praise from Sinologists, museum curators, art experts, connoisseurs and general readers. To make this material accessible to readers and researchers outside of China, The Commercial Press compiled an account of 3,000 collection highlights in English in 10 volumes — The Palace Museum’s Essential Collections. The series was published this year, after putting in over a year of intensive work by all concerned.

Each of these fully illustrated and attractively mounted books is themed — dedicated to textiles and embroideries, antique furniture, calligraphy, jade wares and so on. Each item comes with academic entries and articles written by the Palace Museum’s curators and researchers. Several experienced translators, scholars and experts from Hong Kong came together to facilitate the translation from Chinese into English, which required a knowledge of traditional Chinese art, research, a command of both Chinese and English languages and translation skills. 

Translating the 10-volume The Palace Museum’s Essential Collections took over a year’s intense work. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Stumbling blocks

I was invited to translate three volumes in the series: Chinese Ceramic Ware in Monochrome Glaze, Chinese Ceramic Ware with Polychrome Glaze and Decorative Arts of Palace Treasures. At the outset I tried to find essential reference books and glossary tools on Chinese art. Unfortunately the ones available in the market and libraries were rather old publications containing inaccurate information or outdated material. And then the terminology and descriptions in different books seemed to vary widely, making it necessary to verify the facts every step of the way while translating. I think an updated comprehensive and academic glossary of Chinese art and antiquities to cater to researchers, academic sectors, museum curators, gallery operators and students, besides the flourishing Chinese art markets and auctions is the need of the hour.

Translating Chinese art terminology could be particularly tricky, as a character might carry different meanings and unless one has researched the subject one might interpret it the wrong way. For example, the character qing (青) might sound like a reference to the color of the clear blue sky — the color of blue and white ceramic ware from the Yuan to the Qing Dynasty — but implies celadon (a kind of green, pale green or greenish-white color) as in celadon ware from Song to the Qing Dynasty. Again, Chinese monochrome wares come in a variety of tones — red glaze, bright red glaze, sacrificial red glaze, sky-clearing red glaze, cowpea-red glaze, coral-red glaze, rouge-red glaze, iron-red glaze and so on. 

Also the various abstract ideas related to painting and calligraphy are hard to translate. For example, the term to describe Chinese literati painting literally translates as “breath and rhythm are lively”, while “lively and transcended resonance” is closer to the sense of the lofty and animated aesthetics characterizing the genre.  

Translating across cultures

I also had to pay attention to translating across cultures — be careful not to use Chinese-style syntax. Besides, the cultural context had to be kept in mind while interpreting Chinese terminology. 

For instance, the word “chimera” usually refers to the image of a lion with wings, a mythical beast from Central Asia. Sculptures resembling the chimera would be posted as tomb guardians and carved on jade wares during the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD) through the Northern and Southern Dynasty (420-589), and was continuously used as an artistic motif through the Ming and Qing dynasties. Yet a Chinese bixie (辟邪) is not quite the same as a Central Asian chimera and that distinction needed to be made in the translation. 

I also had to research the changing ways in which a particular utensil would be used down the ages. For instance, gu denoted wine containers in the Shang and Zhou dynasties (1600–256BC) but meant flower vases in the Ming and Qing dynasties.  Also there are special technical terms describing decorative techniques in Chinese antiquities unknown in the West. Getting the right words in English to describe these necessitates a study of these techniques. For example, Chinese lacquer ware styles include cinnabar (refers to red) lacquer, striated carved lacquer (tixi 剔犀) designs (also known as “cloud carving”, obtained by exposing designs to different colors), engraved gold (qiangjin 戧金) colored lacquer (engraved or carved designs filled with gold or silver flakes or strips), gold painted designs, multi-color designs, black lacquer inlaid with mother-of-pearl designs, designs inlaid with baibao (a hundred precious 百寶) stones, raised decorations (zhiwen 識文) and so on. 

And then the difference between the Chinese lunar calendar and the Roman calendar had to be kept in mind when reading for the date of an art object’s origin. 

Translating ancient texts could be a major challenge. In the original Chinese catalogue often quotes from ancient texts and documents have been used to gloss an item. Written in ancient classical Chinese, these could be rather difficult to decipher.  I would first try to get a sense of the original, find an approximation in contemporary Chinese and then translate into English. I followed a similar process to translate the poems Emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty had inscribed on their possessions.

The Palace Museum will enter its 100th anniversary in 2025. The recent publication of the 10-volume compendium of highlights from the Palace Museum collection will, no doubt, serve as an important and indispensible reference for the authentication and dating of Chinese art and antiquities to Anglophone readers. I sincerely hope that the Palace Museum would publish another bilingual series on its collection in the 100th anniversary year.

The author is adjunct professor, Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University and former chief curator, Hong Kong Museum of Art.


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