Translation Studies Research Seminar Series: Joachim Gentz

About the event

by Joachim Gentz

When queried about their connection to Translation Studies, most classical sinologists would likely concede that they have never delved into it, even though translation is integral to their work. This talk endeavours to apply Translation Studies concepts to reflect, in more theoretical terms, on the translation strategies and methods employed by Sarah Queen and myself during a two-year team translation project (2021-2023) in which we produced a ca. 1000 pp. long “thick translation” of the Gongyang zhuan and the Guliang zhuan.

The seminar initiates with an analysis of the repercussions of team translation—a topic seldom explored in Translation Studies. It contends that team translation can serve as a method to enhance control over the intuitive cognitive processes within the translator's mind, often referred to by psycholinguists as the “black box”. This approach aims to mitigate unconscious interventions, such as those rooted in social, cultural, academic, or gendered habitus, and thereby reduce the determinateness of the translation by subjective individual and biographical factors through constant negotiations between members of the translation team.

In our case, this team consisted of an American female Jewish scholar and a German male Protestant scholar. Proceeding, the talk delves into discussions on emic and etic approaches, explaining how domestication and foreignization, clarification, explicitation, and expansion were selectively applied or avoided in the pursuit of what Appiah (1993) has termed a “thick translation” aimed at an etic English readership.

The seminar concludes with a discussion of a number of very detailed translation principles that we developed during our translation of commentaries, a field for which, as far as I know, no Translation Studies theory exists.

About the speaker

Professor Joachim Gentz studied Sinology, Religious Studies and Philosophy at the FU Berlin, continued his studies as DAAD scholarship holder at Nanjing University from 1988–1990. After his MA thesis 1995 on "The Chunqiu exegesis of the first 17 chapters of the Chunqiu fanlu" he wrote his PhD as a member of the Graduate College "Religion and Normativity" on "The Chunqiu exegesis of the Gongyang zhuan from its beginnings to Dong Zhongshu" for which he received the "Ruprecht-Karls-Award" of Heidelberg University.

During the time of dissertation writing he carried out research for two months in Beijing (1996) and for two months with a Monbusho scholarship at the Institute of Oriental Culture at Tokyo University (1997) and he taught as Guest Lecturer at the Institute for the History of China at the Ruhr University Bochum (1998).

After his dissertation he worked for three years (1999-2002) as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies in Heidelberg and was invited as Visiting Professor to the Institute of Oriental Culture at Tokyo University (2000). In the following four years (2002-2006) he worked as Junior Professor at the Department of the Study of Religion, University of Göttingen. From 2006-2008 he joined an Asia Link project at the Cultural Studies programme at Edinburgh University as research fellow in co-operation with German and Chinese universities.

In January 2008 he was invited as William James Visiting Professor by the University of Bayreuth to teach “Chinese Religions and Politics”. From 2009-2014 he was a Reader in Chinese, Head of Chinese Studies and Research Officer of Asian Studies. Since 2014 he has been Chair of Chinese Philosophy and Religion, and since August 2015 he has also been the Head of Asian Studies.

His main fields of interest and research are Zhou and Early Han history and philosophy, text and commentary, Chinese religions, Chinese literary composition, Chinese histories of thought, theories of Cultural and Religious Studies especially theories on ritual, divination, sacred space and body conceptions.

How to attend

This event is open to all, and free to attend. No registration is required for attendance in person; you can email Translation Studies colleagues for online joining details.

About the seminar series

Each semester, we welcome a fantastic range of guest speakers and colleagues to present a seminar on their work in translation.

Our seminar series is run collaboratively by staff and postgraduate students, enabling our early career researchers to build networks and experience.

Entry is free and no booking is required. Everyone is welcome.

Are you interested in Translation Studies at Edinburgh?

Providing excellent teaching and supervision, our postgraduate MSc and PhD programmes are among the UK's most comprehensive and flexible. Our expertise covers a wide range of research areas and many languages, of which you can choose to work with two.