Greater China Legal History Seminar Series – ‘Sir George Staunton’s 1810 Translation of the Qing Penal Code’ by Prof. James St. André

 

 Delighted to pass along this announcement for a quite interesting seminar, with thanks to Lutz-Christian Wollff for bringing it to my attention:

Sir George Staunton’s translation of the Qing legal code, entitled Ta Tsing Leu Lee, published in 1810, stands as a curious early artifact of Chinese-English translation for several reasons: a massive undertaking, it was prepared by a hereditary aristocrat with no formal legal training at a time when the number of direct translations from Chinese could be counted on one hand and next to nothing was known of China’s legal system. In this presentation I will attempt to explain why he attempted this amazing feat, what he accomplished and what his contemporaries thought of it, and fit his translation into the contemporary discourse on both law in Great Britain and the nascent field of sinology.

Using a variety of primary sources including his journals and letters home to family while based in Canton, I argue that Staunton’s translation can and should be read as a work which was meant to persuade its readers that the Chinese had a concept of justice, and that his end was accomplished by a variety of choices in the process of translating, editing, annotating and publishing the work. Although modern scholars now see his work as too free, it is precisely in the freedom which Staunton takes with the text that he accomplishes his aims. The reception of the translation as reflected in contemporary reviews, however, reveals that Staunton was not successful at convincing readers to accept his interpretation of what the code meant, despite the fact that they accepted his translation as accurate, a rather neat irony that speaks to the question of expert knowledge and its interpretation even today.

About the Speaker:

James St. André is Professor and Head of the Department of Translation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he teaches literary translation, translation history, translation theory, and research methodology. He is also the Director of the Centre for Translation Technology. Recent publications include Conceptualising China Through Translation (Manchester University Press 2023) “Implications of Computer Code Translation for Translation Studies” (2023), and “The Translator as Cultural Ambassador: The Case of Lin Yutang.” (2023). Works relating to law and legal translation include “ ‘But do they have a notion of Justice?’ Staunton’s 1810 Translation of the Great Qing Code” (2004), “Reading Court Cases from the Song and the Ming: Fact and Fiction, Law and Literature” (2007) and “ ‘He “catch no ball” leh!’: Globalization Versus Localization in the Singaporean Translation Market” (2006), which includes a section on legal interpreting in Singapore.

Register here to attend the seminar on or before 20 November 2025, 5:00pm (HKT).