Commenting and Translating: An Analysis of Shi yanyi in relation to its source-texts

The reading of interlinear commentarial companions to canonical texts was an essential part of the education of literati in traditional Chinese culture. From a linguistic perspective, interlinear commentaries provided readers with the phonetic and semantic glosses and sentence-by-sentence interpretation of the source-text necessary for its understanding. The rich array of linguistic and hermeneutical operations elaborated within the commentarial tradition presents a fundamental dimension of intralingual translation that could differ according to the level of elucidation needed by the category of reader as targeted by a specific text. In this perspective, the analysis of the commentarial tradition offers the unique possibility to consider the varieties of rewriting practices within the classical language. In my paper I will consider the particular case of the work Shi yanyi 詩演義 (An Explanation of the Odes, Preface 1383) by Liang Yin 梁寅 (1303-1390), which is a subcommentary to the Shijing 詩經 (Book of Odes) that was elaborated to facilitate the study and memorization of the odes by young learners and those approaching the canonical text for the first time. The work is mostly based on an earlier commentary compiled by Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), the Shi jizhuan 詩集傳 (Collected commentaries on the Odes). In my paper I will examine the specific characteristics of the commentaries elaborated in Shi yanyi to elucidate the meaning of the Odes through the intermediating text of Shi jizhuan. Through a close comparison of the two texts I will analyse the microstrategies employed in each commentarial rewording of the Shijing and between the commentaries themselves (subcommentary toward commentary), and I will try to consider how these operations can be related to the specific needs of the target group.