Maggots, Jawbones, and a Multilingual Archive of Decay: An Essay

What has it looked like to translate expletives and curses across languages, and what might we learn from looking closely at an example of a text that tries to do just that? I recently (and very briefly) wrote about this phenomenon in the context of a Qing-era pentaglot dictionary. My thoughts on this text and phenomenon are very much in-progress, but you can find a snapshot … Continue reading Maggots, Jawbones, and a Multilingual Archive of Decay: An Essay

Carla NappiJuly 6, 2014May 29, 2021

Essays

Bolatu’s Pharmacy: An Essay

I’m interested in the ways that recipes and other drug literature were spaces of translation and exchange for people who spoke and wrote different languages and lived in different healing contexts in the early modern world. Some years ago I wrote an essay on this that used the translation of theriac (an extraordinarily important compound drug and poison antidote in medieval and early modern Europe) into … Continue reading Bolatu’s Pharmacy: An Essay

Carla NappiJuly 5, 2014May 29, 2021

Podcasts

Reading Darwin in Arabic: An Interview

Marwa Elshakry’s new book offers a fascinating account of how the work of Darwin and others was read and rendered in modern Arabic-language contexts. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the entanglements of science, translation, and empire in the modern world, and you can find our conversation about it here. Continue reading Reading Darwin in Arabic: An Interview

Carla NappiMay 27, 2014May 29, 2021

Podcasts

Beyond Sinology: An Interview

Andrea Bachner’s wonderfully interdisciplinary new book explores the many worlds and media through which the Chinese script has been imagined, represented, and transformed. It is an exceptionally thoughtful work, it was such a pleasure to talk with Andrea about it, and you can find our conversation here. Continue reading Beyond Sinology: An Interview

Carla NappiMay 24, 2014May 29, 2021

Podcasts

The Plum in the Golden Vase: An Interview

By any measure, David Tod Roy’s five-volume translation The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei is a landmark achievement for East Asian Studies, translation studies, and world literature. It was an honor and a great pleasure to talk with David about his work on the occasion of the publication of the fifth and final volume of his translation, and you can listen to our conversation about it here. Continue reading The Plum in the Golden Vase: An Interview

Carla NappiMay 20, 2014May 29, 2021

Podcasts

Modernity with a Cold War Face: An Interview

Xiaojue Wang’s new book reimagines the history of literature in modern China by considering the work of authors writing across the 1949 divide in the context of the global Cold War. It’s a careful, thoughtful, and ambitious study, and you can listen to our conversation about it here. Continue reading Modernity with a Cold War Face: An Interview

Carla NappiMay 16, 2014May 30, 2021

Stories

Translating Recipes: Fairy Tale Dugs

The next two posts are going up in the next installment of the Translating Recipes experiment for The Recipes Project! You can check out the fairy tale here: Translating Qing Recipes 3: Fairy Tale Drugs Translating Qing Recipes 4: The Girl, the Scorpion, and the Doctor Continue reading Translating Recipes: Fairy Tale Dugs

Carla NappiApril 24, 2014May 30, 2021

Stories

Translating Qing Recipes: An Experiment

Today & tomorrow on The Recipes Project: a two-part experiment in translating Qing Manchu medical recipes into steamy melodrama. Pt. 1 is here, and Pt. 2 (where it gets all steamy all up in there) is here! For further installments in this ongoing project, see the Publications page of this site. Continue reading Translating Qing Recipes: An Experiment

Carla NappiJanuary 22, 2014May 30, 2021

News

KUNGGUR kanggar!: A landscape of Manchu onomatopoeias

Back in November, I was fortunate enough to join a panel of wonderful scholars, all of whom I deeply respect and admire, in the plenary session of the History of Science Society 2013 annual meeting in Boston. We were all talking, in different ways and using different media, about the importance of experimentation with the form of academic narratives about objects and the history of … Continue reading KUNGGUR kanggar!: A landscape of Manchu onomatopoeias

Carla NappiJanuary 7, 2014May 30, 2021

Podcasts

Mr. Selden’s Map of China: An Interview

Timothy Brook’s beautifully written new book explores the secrets of a map in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. I recently had the pleasure of talking with Tim about it for New Books in History, and you can find our conversation here. Continue reading Mr. Selden’s Map of China: An Interview

Carla NappiJanuary 5, 2014May 30, 2021