TS - Jia Ye (2021)

A history from below: Translators in the publication network of four magazines issued by the China Book Company, 1913–1923 Michelle Jia Ye https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14781700.2021.1950043, Translation Studies

• Revistas chinesas do in´cio da década de 20.
• The inclusion of translation most likely took its cue from the good reception of translated fiction in China circa 1900, which owed much to the fast-selling Chinese translation of La Dame aux Camélias published in 1895 (Xie and Zha 2003, 56–60; Meng and Li 2005, 50–55). That translating was a legitimate form of writing and a promising route to publication was implied in the calls to readers and contributors. The calls were also proof of the publishers’ confidence in receiving voluntarily submitted translations, suggesting translation was something familiar to, and even practiced by, the literate public. 2
• Editores também traduziam.
• In historical studies, history from below has been carried out to offer “an alternative perspective to what might be termed as ‘top person’s history’” (Sharpe 2001, 26) and to “criticize, redefine and strengthen the historical mainstream” (39). Such histories explore “the historical experiences of those men and women whose existence is so often ignored, taken for granted, or mentioned in passing in mainstream history” (26). The first incorporation of the search for the “ordinary” in translation historiography may be found in Munday’s (2014) proposal to write microhistories of translation and translators. Drawing on the method of microhistory (Levi 1991; Ginzburg [1976] 1980, 1993), Munday (2014, 64) proposes the use of primary sources such as translators’ “personal papers, manuscripts and related archives and other testimony” to reconstruct translators’ external realities and work processes, and produce thus “a social and cultural history” of translators. Referencing Sharpe’s (2001) history from below, Munday (2014, 67) describes such an approach as “cultural history from below”, and considers that this method has been central in and similar to microhistory in certain ways. Munday’s association of history from below with microhistory highlights the common interest in the experience of ordinary people. Nonetheless, there is a subtle distinction between the two approaches in Munday’s work. History from below is notable for its ideological position, inherited at it was from British Marxism and the French Annales School as a paradigm to counteract the dominant history of “the‘great men’ of politics and world affairs” (Munday 2014, 67), whilst microhistory in its origin (Levi 1991) is carried out through small-scale qualitative analysis of heterogeneous evidence. This method also underlies Munday’s treatment of manuscripts, archives and oral history materials to uncover true stories of the translator (Munday 2014, 68–75). Sharing much of Munday’s sympathy for the “ordinary”, while engaging a larger-scale quantitative network approach, my study applies the idea of history from below to the recovery of the magazine translators, and attempts to contravene the selectiveness in current Chinese translation history that resembles what Munday (2014, 66–68) recognizes as the limitations of translation historiography in general. 4
• cita alguns casos bem e mal sucedidos em mostrar o ordinário.
• Método gephi
• The envisioned publication network of this study consists of the publisher, the four magazines, the editors, the contributors, and the organizations to which these persons were affiliated. They are the elements, or nodes, of the network (node sheet in Item B; further explanation in Section B.1, Item I). In the node sheet, each person node carries a unique label, which is the disambiguated name of the contributor or editor. Each person node is given certain attributes, including the number of magazines the person published in (Column “connection”), the total number of the person’s publications (Column “frequency”), bibliographical information on the person’s first appearance in the magazines (Column “1st appearance”), and the marked identity as translator or non-translator (Column “translator”). Those who published translations are categorized as “translator”, and the rest simply as “person” (Column “type”). Each organization node is assigned to one of the five areas – business, press, school, government or association (Column “type”) – based on the nature of operation. 
• The other key component of the network is the links, or “edges”, which connect the nodes (edge sheet in Item B; further explanation in Section B.2 in Item I). An edge in this study represents a publishing relationship, which could mean one of the following situations. If a magazine publishes the work of a person, or posts an advertisement for an organization, the situation is marked as an edge. If a contributor acknowledges his or her professional, educational or other social affiliation in a publication, these affiliations are also registered as edges, because the affiliations become visible in the printed content. If a person is demonstrably related to another – for example, in the paratextual notes on the title pages that reveal co-authorship and co-translation partnerships, in a family portrait or a stage shot of a drama performance in the photography columns, or, more overtly, in a piece of poetry dedicated to a friend – the link is also recorded in the edge sheet. 
• The connections between all contributors and editors, with translators marked in the spreadsheet (column “translator” in node sheet in Item B), are then formatted to generate a network graph in Gephi (Item D). The assignment of node colors is primarily based on venues of publication. That is, a contributor or organization node shares the color of the magazine in which the contributor or organization was published for the first time. Nodes with the “translator” attribute are shaded in bright red to stand out for the purpose of this study. The initial mapping of the publication network (Item E and Figure 1) is the result of the application of the Yifan Hu attraction-repulsion model (Hu, undated digital text). In this layout, connected nodes move closer to each other; a node with multiple edges moves into the middle areas between its connected neighbors. Such movement results in clusterization. The color clouds occupying the four corners of the graph are the four magazine nodes with their clusters of contributors and external affiliations. 
• In turn, the attraction-repulsion movement also brings the connectors in the network to the surface. While the singly connected nodes (e.g. one-time contributors in this study) stay within their own magazine clusters and linger on the outer margins of the graph, the multiply connected nodes (e.g. contributors who published in more than one magazine and/or are affliated with external institutions) find their way towards the center of the graph. Nodes that share the same set of edges tend to gather together, forming small bridges between big clusters. In very simple terms, to see if something is a connector of a network is to observe if it is present in the bridges and in the center. 9-11
• This experimental study serves several purposes. First, by drawing on the idea of history from below and by charting periodical networks, the study establishes the four magazines of the China Book Company as a meaningful empirical data set for supplementing Chinese translation history of the early twentieth century. Second, the study offers structured data on the magazine translators, making their publications and affiliations visible to translation historians. Third, by mapping the collected data into a publication network in Gephi, the study reveals the translator as a constitutive and connective element of the magazines’ intellectual, social and economic make-up, and describes the cluster of individuals who came to the translation scene from various sectors of modern Chinese society with a common purpose to be published. It is also safe to assume that, in the case of the multiply-published exclusive translators, translation was an effective way to ensure continued opportunities to publish. Proceeding from this understanding, the study suggests that translation in this historical setting was a discursive mode of production that enabled and popularized the very act of publication. 14
• Hist from below como alternativa a história do "great man", dos tradutores mais famosos.

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Folaron, Deborah, and Hélène Buzelin. 2007. “Introduction: Connecting Translation and Network Studies.” Meta 52 (4): 605–642.