Forms and practices of intralingual translation in premodern China

Since antiquity, practices of intralingual translation have represented an essential component of Chinese commentarial literature; however, studies of translation practice or translation history rarely consider their contribution to translation studies. This chapter looks at specific instances of reformulation in popularising ancient texts in the context of premodern education from the 12th century onward, tracing various forms of intralingual translation in premodern textual culture, from reformulation in commentarial annotations to narrative rewriting. After outlining the theoretical framework of the study based on current research on intralingual translation, this chapter sketches out the discourse on the language modernisation of ancient texts during the 20th century, highlighting the role assigned to annotation as a textual space designated to record processes of language transfer. It then turns to the popularisation of ancient texts in the premodern period to focus on the analysis of the categories jujie (explication by sentence), zhijie (direct explication) and yanyi (elaboration of the meaning) through the discussion of examples excerpted from various primary sources, all variably related to a pedagogical domain.