Intralingual Translation, Language Shifting, and Interpretation in East Asian Classical and Premodern Cultures: A Research Project of the CRCAO (Research Center on East Asian Civilizations, EPHE-PSL, CNRS, Paris, France)

International audienceIn the context of its pluriglossic situation, intralingual translation appears as a key parameter for analyzing the history of the linguistic phenomena and textual practices of classical and premodern China and East Asia, facing the coexistence and intermingling of various linguistic realities, from classical Chinese and literary Sinitic varieties to the rise of written vernacular languages. Scholars working in East Asian classical and premodern studies constantly come upon situations in which the very parameters of the language used in a given text are in themselves a key-feature of its meaning. Citation, commentary, rewriting, the genesis of textual traditions, the formation of narratives, and the circulation of themes across different genres, routinely involve discursive strategies in which the semiotics of the text is achieved not only through the explicit level of its contents, but also through the implicit dimension of the linguistic choices that were made in order to carry it. This is true, in particular, where authors show a consciousness of the diglossic nature of the written language, a linguistic situation which is widespread throughout the so-called “Sinographosphere”, going far beyond the frontiers of China itself. Intralingual translation can be both narrowly defined—translating from one variety of a given language into another—, or more broadly understood—so as to include phenomena of rewording, rewriting, commenting, and continuous reinterpretation. But whatever the form it takes, it represents a pervasive phenomenon that is central to the dynamics of textual production, reception, and circulation in the aforementioned written traditions. The pluriannual project involves fields of research centered on the Chinese tradition and including other cultural areas of East Asia (Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Central Asia …) characterized by the shared use of sinogrammatic scriptures