Intralingual translation and the making of the yanyi textual category

The textual category of yanyi (lit. elaboration on the meaning) has been mainly discussed in relation to the rich production of vernacular narratives based on historical and pseudo-historical records which were published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the context of the late imperial print culture. The narrative outgrowth of this textual category, however, marked the point of convergence and transformation of some key elements germinated in earlier centuries in the first occurrences of this category within the context of the commentarial tradition. Particularly relevant among these features are the use of amplification in the hermeneutical practice, the impact of printing and the flourishing of pedagogically focused commentaries, as well as the prominent role assigned in these commentaries to practices of rephrasing to help the reading and learning of canonical and non-canonical texts. In my presentation I will focus on this earlier stage of yanyi in the commentarial tradition and will discuss selected textual examples from two fourteenth century works: the anthology Du lü yanyi (Explanations of Du Fu’s codified poetry) by Zhang Xing, and the commentary Shi yanyi (Explanations on the Odes, preface 1383) by Liang Yin (1303-1390). I will analyze what kind of interpretive practices and what kind of attitudes toward language do these texts envision, particularly from the perspective of intralingual translation, and will try to define what kind of social needs they were addressing and what kind of social action they were meant to accomplish in the context of their production. The aim of this presentation is twofold: (i) to contribute to shed some light on the conceptualization of yanyi as a process of mediation and interaction between levels of culture; (ii) to contribute to a description of some of the discursive practices at the heart of this process in terms of translation.