Into the River of History: An Account of My Translation Work with the Grand Scribe’s Records (Shiji)

Abstract

In the beginning was the text. Actually, I should have written “in the beginning were the texts,” since Sima Qian makes it clear he left both an original version of the Shiji and a copy). And the text was called Taishigong ji 太史公記 or Taishigong shu 太史公書. There are various understandings of Taishigong 太史公 but any translated title should recognize that the shi 史 in Shiji is short for this official title not for “history” or even “historian.” Thus translations such as “Records of History” or “Historical Records” or “Records of the Scribe” and even “Records of the Historian” are inaccurate. Our rendering of the “Grand Scribe’s Records” may be open to discussion, but that discussion must acknowledge that the Shiji is an abbreviation and address the original title Taishigong. I have often been asked to describe the Shiji in a few words: my attempts include “a national narrative of early China” and “a combination of the Old Testament and Herodotus.” But they both fall short of Wang Chong’s 王充 (127–200) metaphoric depiction: “those books written in the Han dynasty were numerous: Sima Qian is the Yellow River and Yang Xiong the Han River, the remainder are the Jing and Wei rivers” 漢作書者多, 司馬子長、楊子雲, 河、漢也, 其餘, 涇、渭也 (In the “An shu” 案書 chapter of the Lunheng). Although I am not a good swimmer, in what follows I shall try to explain how I entered Sima Qian’s river.

This chapter is reprinted from: Nienhauser, William H. Jr. 2020. Into the River of History: An Account of My Translation Work with the Grand Scribe’s Records (Shiji). Translation Horizons 10: 111–123.