Description
The “Yueren ge” (“Song of a Yue Person”), presented as a Chu-style verbalization of a “Yue” song and thus the oldest poetic “translation” from a non-Chinese language to classical Chinese, yields new insights into the metamorphoses of languages, literature, poetics, and knowledge production in early China. The study makes two main observations followed by critical discussion: first, the embedded asymmetry and intra-lingual orientation underlying the trans-lingual practice between the Yue song and the Chu version, complicating the theoretical model of “translation” in ancient Chinese context; second, the intertextual correspondence between the Chu version and other early and medieval poems, especially their variable instantiations of a condensed body of sounds and meanings that had its own history beyond any individual poetic artifact. The “Song of a Yue Person” thus presents itself as a product of translation-as-composition, showcasing a particular way of becoming that, by means of poetic devices and intellectual labor, was intra-lingually accumulated and oriented toward an emerging literary culture before and during early imperial China. Moreover, the case also invites critical inquiries into broader issues of media, materiality, sociology, and literary productivity, all of which are associated with an intra-lingually coded system and its embedded aesthetics and ideology.| Period | 13 Mar 2026 |
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| Event title | The Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference 2026 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Vancouver, Canada, British ColumbiaShow on map |