Translation Studies Research Seminar Series: David Hayes and Dongxuan Zhao

About the event

Epiphany Through the Page—Roman Missal Translations as Textual Performances Manifesting Spiritual Identity

By David Hayes

Christian sacred-text translations—such as the Bible and liturgical books used during ritual worship—are often produced by Churches as translating institutions rather than by individual translators in their own name. This is especially so for liturgical translations issued by the Catholic Church, whose translators work anonymously according to centralized institutional directives.

Instead of interpreting negatively this aspect of Catholic liturgical translation (as the top–down imposition of institutional power and control), I appeal to the notion of collective agency—whereby the agency of the Catholic Church as institutional self-translator is greater than the sum of each individual translator’s agency—to view it more positively.

Focusing on English and French Roman Missal (RM) translations (i.e., the Mass texts), I argue that they should be analysed through the prism of the Catholic Church’s belief that the Mass manifests and makes present the Church on earth. RM translations are therefore textual performances linked to the Church’s ritual self-representation through the liturgy. Inspired by Hanna’s conviction that ‘religious cultures and theologies’ offer ‘metaphors, narratives and conceptual tools with explanatory force of translation phenomena,’ I further argue that RM translations are metaphors of the Epiphany, manifesting the Catholic Church’s spiritual identity.

Transcultural, Intermedial Re-interpretation of ‘Rudimentary Military-Diplomatic’ Strategies in 21st century: 'Sunzi Bingfa' ('The Art of War') from Chinese Ancient Classic to Comics 

By Dongxuan Zhao

As one of the most widely translated Chinese classics, 'Sunzi Bingfa' ('The Art of War') has increasingly moved from professional annotated editions to illustrated commentaries and, more recently, comics and graphic-novel retellings. This intermedial shift matters because comics do not merely “simplify” the treatise: by integrating text, image, and layout, they reorganize how strategic knowledge is narrated, who is authorized to speak for “Sunzi,” and which meanings are left implicit for readers to supply. The result is not only a change in translation strategy but a broader recontextualization of the text’s military discourse for contemporary non-military domains such as business, leadership, and self-help.

This project examines English-language 'Art of War' comics as source-accountable intermedial (re)translations that popularize the classic through distinct genre pathways. Emphasizing chronology and source attribution, it treats C. C. Tsai’s early comics adaptation as a baseline model of what it means to “adapt a classic” in comics form, and then traces how later Anglophone versions position themselves in relation to that baseline.

Comparing the English versions associated with Leong Weng Kam (1991) and Brian Bruya (1994; 2018), it shows how retranslations may either translate Tsai’s vernacular mediation or strategically “return” to the classical Chinese, and it analyzes the purposes and effects of maintaining versus shifting the source anchor—especially in how these choices reshape narrative authority, market address, and what readers are invited to take as “Sunzi’s” voice.

About the speakers

David Hayes 

David Hayes is a fifth-year, part-time PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, as well as a freelance translator working between French and English. In addition to degrees in botany/microbiology and theology, he holds the Chartered Institute of Linguists’ diploma in translation (French to English) and an MA in translation. His thesis in sacred text translation is situated within the subfield of liturgical translation. It develops a performative framework to critically analyse French and English (re-)translations of the Roman Missal in the Latin rite Catholic Church. This project is partly funded by the St Matthias Foundation (UK).

Dongxuan Zhao 

Dongxuan Zhao is a second-year PhD student in Translation Studies at the University of Edinburgh, funded by the China Scholarship Council. Her research explores multimodal and intermedial translation, postcolonial theory, and the global reinterpretation of Chinese classics. Her doctoral project, Transcultural, Intermedial Re-interpretation of “Rudimentary Military-Diplomatic” Strategies in the 21st Century: Sunzi Bingfa from a Chinese Ancient Classic to Comics, was funded by Moray House for field research

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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.

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