Translating China

Research Project

Practicing legal history in a global perspective also means learning from and about each other.

The engagement with Chinese culture quickly reveals that there is a profound knowledge of Western legal thinking and legal traditions in China. In contrast, our own knowledge about China is rather limited. One of the reasons for this is a long and abundant tradition of translating contemporary German authors and their works into Chinese. By comparison, in Germany there is hardly any awareness of intellectual debates about Chinese legal traditions and China's self-conception. The invocation of China's own legal traditions, however, is of great importance also for contemporary Chinese politics – at the latest since the dawn of the New Era of the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.

Given the context outlined above, the project China – Norms, Ideas, Practices aims to translate a selection of texts authored by contemporary Chinese scholars into German and publish them, accompanied by introductory remarks. The focus will be on texts written by Chinese intellectuals who represent important voices in current academic debates. These texts will address major questions of law and politics in China primarily from a historical perspective. In general, the translation project aims to provide new ways of looking at the broad spectrum of views between, on the one hand, official statements and on the other, critical voices emanating from the West in particular. This is the best – perhaps only – way to develop an appropriate understanding of traditions of self-interpretation, which are vital to any political community. In light of rapid economic growth and transformation in China, the importance of this self-interpretation is clear. Regarding the individual translation projects, introductory remarks will be provided to assist German readers in situating the texts into their appropriate contexts.

The project is being carried out in cooperation with the Werner Reimers Foundation. The first three volumes were supported by the Mercator Foundation, the C.H.Beck Foundation for Culture and the Max Weber Foundation.

For the first translation cycle, three monographs as listed below have been selected and are currently being translated:

Teaser-Bild: CC-BY-SA by 三猎