Translation of Western Languages and Sino-Japanese Linguistic Interactions

In translation of Western languages which started centuries ago both in China and Japan, a great number of neologisms were created to denote new things and concepts introduced from the West. With regard to the creation of neologisms, China and Japan influenced each other. Some neologisms were created in China and borrowed into Japanese, while others were created in Japan and borrowed into Chinese. In my talk, after a brief introduction to the study of Sino-Japanese linguistic interactions, an unexpectedly complex history of the place names 牛津 and 剑桥 will be explored.

This talk will be conducted in English.

Tanomura Tadaharu is a professor of Japanese linguistics in the Graduate School of Humanities at Osaka University, Japan. He has published more than a hundred papers and several books in various fields related to language. His research interests include, among others, Japanese linguistics (grammar, semantics, phonology, etc.), corpus linguistics, Sino-Japanese linguistic interactions, loanwords in Chinese, the early history of English learning in China and Japan.