Was it Translated: Türkish Diplomatic Correspondence to China in Medieval Times
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ancient diplomatic correspondence to China from East Asian states has been a subject of research interest in Sinology, especially with respect to its relevance to historical politics and ideology in Asia. References to its implications to translation studies, if any, were, however, quite minimal. This article represents an initial attempt to examine China-bound diplomatic correspondence from the perspective of translation history. Diplomatic letters sent in medieval times by Yamato (known as Japan since 700) and the three Korean states (namely, Paekche, Silla, and Koguryǒ) were generally confirmed to be written in Chinese, not translated. However, the case for China-bound diplomatic correspondence from Türk (on Mongolia steppes)—previously a rival state to China, and later on a vassal state—is still controversial. In this article, examples are chosen from two letters presented by the Türkish qaqhans (tribal chieftains) to China during the Sui dynasty (581–618), to find out if these letters might have been translated from the Türkic language into Chinese. Evidence from standard histories of Northern dynasty China (ZhoushuandBeiqishu, among others) suggests the existence and use of a written Türkic language by the mid-sixth century. This written language, borrowing some Sogdian (present-day Uzbek) words, was said to be similar to the other written languages on the steppes, and was found to have been used in diplomatic and religious contexts, as early as the mid-sixth century. This article argues that if there was a written language in Türk at the time, it is reasonable to assume that the Türkish state letters presented to China might have been written in the Türkic language first, before being translated into Chinese.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".