The 39th Tobunken-ASNET Seminar

“A corpus-based sociolinguistic study of early modern Chinese scientific translations”

The 39th seminar cosponsored by Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia and ASNET will be held as follows. This seminar is open to public.


Date & Time:   10th November(Thu), 17:00-18:00

Venue:   Lobby, 1st Floor, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo

Title:   “A corpus-based sociolinguistic study of early modern Chinese scientific translations”
Lecturer:   JI, Meng (Visiting Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia)

Language:   English

Entry:   Not required

Cosponsored by:   Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia & ASNET

Summary:   The establishment of a working scientific language was instrumental in the construction of China’s early modern scientific identity, as a result of its increasing engagement with Western scientific concepts and idea sets. This study will offer a corpus-based investigation of representative early Chinese scientific translations from a range of Western languages including English, French, German and Dutch. This corpus-based study examines into the complex historical process of the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic scientific exchange between China, Japan and the West in the late nineteenth century. Through the quantitative corpus analysis, this study identified important patterns in the development of key linguistic features of an emerging scientific language system in modern Chinese, for example, token length and functional particles. The insights gained through the use of exploratory statistical techniques point to useful directions for future research in corpus-based translation studies.

Contact to:   Network for Research and Studies on Asia (ASNET)
Tel:03-5841-5868
e-mail: asnet[at]asnet.u-tokyo.ac.jp