Welcome!

This site is part of the Nineteenth-Century Chinese-English Translation Networks Project, sponsored by the Hong Kong Research Council, under the direction of James St. André in the Department of Translation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Here you will find information about how various translators were linked, either through direct personal contact, geographic location, clubs and organizations, or intermediary figures.

The idea is to explore the relationship between such connections and their translation practice.The site is very much a work in progress. We currently have information on 40 translators in the database, but hope to expand it to over 200 individuals by some time in 2023.

Meanwhile, we invite you to explore the interactive map to see where translators lived and worked (including on ships, where some of them spent several years), as well as the relationships generated from data on who knew whom. There are also separate pages for each translator, although not all of these have much more than a link to various websites that already have their biographies.

Also check out the blog, where we will be adding additional posts on a variety of related topics, including the travails of travel to China in the nineteenth century, the various formats used for C-E translation in the nineteenth century, and how translation intersected with missionary work, mercantile ventures, and diplomacy.

Be sure to check back on a regular basis, and follow the Centre for Translation Technology (CTT) on social media

You may also be interested in James St. Andre’s Director’s blog at CTT.