Travel, Translation, and Transcultural Memory: Memorializing heritage of South(east) Asia in two ancient Chinese travelogues and their modern French and English renditions

This doctoral project intends to explore transcultural (re)making of heritage and memory through travel and translation. It will be a three-fold study of 1) a 7th-century and a 13th-century Chinese travel writing of what we now call “cultural heritage” in the then India and Cambodia as cultural translations (Maitland 2017: 10), namely, Datang Xiyu Ji by Xuan Zang and Zhenla Fengtu Ji by Zhou Daguan, 2) further translations of these two travelogues into French and English in different phases of modernity (early, mid and late), and 3) how such cultural and linguistic translations shape transcultural memory making throughout time and influence contemporary heritage tourism in relevant World Heritage Sites. Adopting discourse analytical methods, it shall reveal how translation, travel, heritage and memory may interrelate and interact as in a global network of time, space, knowledge, and power.