Acknowledgements
Our thanks go, first of all, to the two institutional sponsors of this research project on the Western reception of Chinese literary and philosophical texts via translation: the International Academy for Chinese Studies (IACS) at Beijing University, and the Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies (formerly the Center for Humanities Research) at Lingnan University. It began with an interest in understanding the part played by translation in disseminating a body of texts from China, enabling it to travel in time and space, and cross linguistic and cultural barriers.
Next, the authors of the nine papers collected here are to be thanked for taking up the challenge of contributing to our project. After finishing their initial drafts, they participated at the two workshops where their work was presented, discussed, and critiqued: the first on “The Reception of Chinese Masterworks in the West” (10–11 April, 2021) and the second on “Reconsidering the Translation of Chinese Philosophy” (9–10 May, 2021). Following our initial guidelines, they did close readings of source and target works and recounted the tales of transfer, transmission, and transformation that make up the history of multi-level interaction between China and the West.
A special vote of thanks goes to Stephen Roddy for his enthusiastic support throughout, especially for making available his own expertise in organizing a similar project in 2020. We are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on the initial manuscript, leading to significant improvements as well as reorganization of the chapters. For administrative assistance, we are indebted to the staff of the Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies at Lingnan University; to Masja Horn, of Brill Publishers, for assistance in launching the “Chinese Texts in the World” series; and to Christa Stevens (also of Brill) for seeing things through so efficiently and responding to our enquiries with such alacrity.
Despite the endless handicaps and delays caused by the pandemic, we are glad to see the project brought to completion. Our modest hope is that this volume will stimulate similar endeavors at (re)constructing the history of Sino-Western transtextual relationships.