News and Events
[6-7, Jun. 2025] 【Event Highlights】 Harvard-Yenching Institute Alumni Workshop 2025
| HYI Alumni Workshop 2025 | Translation of the Sacred and Mystical Texts in Interfaith Dialogue |
| The Chinese University of Hong Kong | June 6–7, 2025 |
| Jointly organized by the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Research Centre for Translation at CUHK, this two-day workshop brought together scholars from around the world to explore how sacred texts such as the Daodejing, the Kabbalah, the Bible, and the Yijing have been translated, reinterpreted, and reimagined across religious and cultural boundaries. |
| Highlights include: |
| • Prof. James Robson (Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University; Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute) discussed how the Daodejing has become a “blank slate” for reinterpretation across diverse global religious and philosophical traditions. |
| • Prof. Elena Valussi on the underexplored translation history of Daoist Neidan (inner alchemy) texts in the West—including rare female alchemical writings—and how different translations reflect diverse interpretive frameworks and audiences |
| • Prof. Thierry Meynard on 17th-century Dominican critiques of Confucianism during the Canton exile, showing how missionary translators used Biblical and Scholastic categories to evaluate and reshape Confucian texts such as the Analects and Great Learning |
| • Prof. Sophie Ling-chia Wei on Jesuit Figurist efforts to synthesize the Kabbalistic Tree of Life with the Yijing cosmology and hexagrams to construct a shared cosmology |
| • Prof. Misha Tadd on the philosophical challenges of translating "Being" and "Non-being" in the Latin Laozi, and how Jesuit translators negotiated metaphysical meanings across linguistic and doctrinal divides |
| • Prof. Daniel Canaris on François Noël’s philological and ethical reinterpretation of the Yijing, moving away from earlier mystical readings |
| • Prof. Ji Li on the cultural and political evolution of holy water in Chinese Christian contexts—from spiritual healing to superstition—based on missionary texts and local media |
| • Prof. Gang Song on the Taiping Bible as a literary and theological re-translation, showing how Hong Xiuquan reworked the text with folk religious elements and limited biblical exposure |
| • Prof. Francesco Borghesi on Michele Ruggieri’s Chinese religious poetry and the challenges of translating Christian concepts into classical Chinese |
| The workshop emphasized that “translation is not merely linguistic—it is a key practice for religious understanding and cross-cultural dialogue.” |
| We are deeply grateful to all participating scholars for their thought-provoking presentations and generous intellectual engagement. The conversations were rich, inspiring, and filled with moments of genuine exchange across disciplines, traditions, and worldviews. Their contributions will continue to resonate as we reflect on the roles of translation in cross-cultural and inter-religious understanding. |
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