Mastering languages, taming the world : the production and circulation of European dictionaries and lexicons of Asian languages, 16th-19th centuries

Bilingual dictionaries and lexicons edited or compiled during the early modern and modern eras (1500–1900) offer invaluable historical insights into the dynamics of international interactions and encounters between Europeans and Asians, mostly in terms of cultural exchanges, but also in connection with variegated forms of diplomatic activities (both official and non-official), and even more with Catholic and, later, Protestant, missionary enterprises. If they shed light on the advancement of linguistic knowledge and its dynamics, dictionaries are themselves the products of this knowledge, they are also the most precious tools for philologists and translators to ply their trade. This volume includes thirteen contributions from scholars with different backgrounds and methodologies to better emphasise the inexhaustible richness of these understudied materials, and to pave the way for future research perspectives on Asian “word–hoards.”

Table of Contents

Michela BUSSOTTI & François LACHAUD
Introduction

Dejanirah COUTO
Glossaries, Vocabularios and Dictionaries in the Estado da Índia (16th–17th Centuries)

KISHIMOTO Emi
Stairway to the Stars: Jesuit Training and the Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum (1595)

Rui Manuel LOUREIRO
A Contextualising Look at the “Declaração em Portugues” of the Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam (Nagasaki, 1603–1604)

François LACHAUD
Found in Translation: Lives and Afterlives of the Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam (1603–1604)

OSHIMA Mikio
The Chamberlain and the Castaway: Nikolai P. Rezanov’s Russian-Japanese Lexicons

Henning KLÖTER & Hans-Jörg DÖHLA
Early Spanish-Chinese Encounters in the Philippines and the Birth of Spanish-Chinese Lexicography

María Teresa GONZÁLEZ LINAJE
Chinese Culture in the Shadows: Spanish Contributions through Manuscript Dictionaries of Chinese, 17th and 18th Centuries

María Teresa GONZÁLEZ LINAJE & Michela BUSSOTTI
Annexes

Michela BUSSOTTI
“Not Only Brollo”: Manuscripts of Bilingual Chinese Dictionaries and their Layout

YANG Huiling
Chinese Lexical Traditions in Basilio Brollo’s Dictionarium Sinico-Latinum

Mariarosaria GIANNINOTO
Entries and Glossaries on Empty Words in Western Sources During the Qing Period

Eugenio MENEGON
Empire of Paper: A Shady Dealer, An Insatiable Linguist, An Industrious Missionary, and the Extraordinary Journey of A Manuscript Vocabulary between Beijing and Rome, 1760s–1820s

Mårten SÖDERBLOM SAARELA
Manchu Studies and the Jesuit Mission to China: Between Mandarin and Classical Chinese

YOSHIKAWA Masayuki
A Short History of Cantonese-English Dictionaries: A Philological Approach to the Shaping of Standard Cantonese During the 19th Century

Bibliography
List of Figures, and Tables
Photographic credits
Index
Abstracts / Résumés
Authors / Auteurs