Heurist databaseCSMC Releases English-Chinese Glossary of Manuscriptology

7 March 2025

To facilitate communication between researchers East and West, a team of experts at the CSMC and partner institutions has published a glossary providing Chinese translations of terms used in manuscriptology and related fields.

Communication across academic boundaries remains a challenge for cross-disciplinary manuscript research. It is not uncommon for terms that have a specific meaning in one field to be used differently or not at all in neighbouring fields. Mutual understanding is even more difficult when, in addition to these differences in usage, there is also a language barrier.

To facilitate professional exchange with Chinese-speaking colleagues in manuscriptology and related fields, a group of experts at the CSMC, the Department of Chinese Literature at the National Taiwan University (NTU), and the National Palace Museum (NPM) have been developing an English-Chinese glossary that translates key terms. It was compiled according to relevance for manuscript studies in general, while also including some specific terms. For Chinese users, the glossary may help to better understand Western manuscriptology, while Western scholars can use it for translating their research into Chinese.

The first edition of the English-Chinese Glossary of Manuscriptology was compiled by Michael Friedrich and contained over a hundred terms. In 2023, Shih Chao-Hsuan (NTU) took over the editorial work, expanding the glossary to its current scale. At a later stage, Chao Fei-Peng (NTU), Tseng Chi-Kang (NPM), Lin Horng-Jia (NTU), Chang Yu-Wei (NTU), He Xiaomeng, Thies Staack, Ondřej Škrabal, and Sun Hui (Heidelberg) were invited to comments and suggestions, helping to improve the glossary. It was now published in the form of a database hosted at the CSMC, with technical assistance from Sylvia Melzer and Thomas Asselborn and data entry support from Hui Xu.

Users are welcome to help improving the glossary further by providing their feedback.