Traduttore, traditore: The Jesuit Construction of Science via Translation in Ming-Qing China, 1600-1800

University of San Francisco Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History hosts a discussion of early modern scientific texts translated jointly by Christian missionaries and Chinese literati.

Traduttore, traditore: The Jesuit Construction of Science via Translation in Ming-Qing China, 1600-1800

When Europeans reached China during the age of exploration, they encountered different scientific explanations for natural phenomena. European scientia, represented by the specialized branches of Aristotelian moral and natural philosophy, encountered in China the naturalistic concepts of yin-yang, qi, and the classical ideal of the six arts.

This lecture will examine early modern scientific texts translated jointly by Christian missionaries and Chinese literati. These translations were not simply byproducts of the missionary enterprise, but texts encoded with Christian messages and religiously-induced silences written in classical Chinese. The focus is not on translation as a futile exercise in philosophical incommensurability, but on the use of Christian beliefs in scientific textbooks translated into Chinese.

Speaker: Dr. Benjamin Elman, Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University

Discussion facilitator: Dr. Mark Miller, Assistant Professor, St.
Ignatius Institute, University of San Francisco

Free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the Ricci Institute at 415-422-6401 or by email. 

Announcement via H-Asia