This book comes from a publisher who specialises in studies of translation, but is not known for being active in Asian Studies, so it may not have caught the attention of many who might find it interesting. It is worth seeking out, because it has much to offer not only to scholars of the theory and practice of translation, but also to specialists in cultural and social history, to say nothing of those working in Buddhist Studies. Although the volume does consider the role of translation in the secular and diplomatic contexts, the major part is devoted to materials arising from the massive and enduring project of translating Buddhist works from Indian languages into Chinese. This was a vast and ambitious endeavour that occupied some of the finest minds of the medieval period. Fortunately for us, it is not just the translations themselves that survive, but also texts written around and about the process of translation. The sources collected and discussed in this volume thus represent an invaluable archive for the study of a particularly interesting case of cultural transmission, one that is still well worth reflecting on in our current global age.

The majority of the eighty-two sources in the book are rendered into English for the first time. The editor has presented them in chronological order, and has striven to maintain consistency of terminology across the span of the centuries covered by the volume. The structure of the work is thus helpful for tracing developments in translation practices. The many cross-references between the entries ensure that this is a well-integrated book that can be read from cover to cover, not just dipped into as the need arises. Some of the passages Cheung has selected will, inevitably, be well known (at least to scholars), but a fair number of them are still relatively obscure. All the texts are by men, save one by Empress Wu (r. 690–705 ce) on p. 168. One of the strengths of the volume is that it includes a fair number of passages from writers who were not direct participants in translation projects but who still had interesting things to say about language – men like the third-century commentator and thinker Wang Bi (pp. 63–65), or the statesman, poet, and scholar Shen Yue (441–513 ce) (pp. 113–114).

For each entry in the book, there is a headnote to introduce its author, followed by the passage in English translation, and then a commentary. Both the passage and commentary are well documented with footnotes. The translations themselves are readable and mostly reliable. Chinese characters are used liberally throughout the book and, most usefully, also appear in the index, although for some reason they are conspicuously absent from the table of dynasties where they might have been helpful. The brief biographies of people mentioned in the text (pp. 203–217) will save the reader from continually consulting other reference works while engaging with the book. Scholars and teachers may find a variety of uses for this volume, but I suspect that, as a single volume in which a variety of relevant primary sources on translation of scriptures may be readily located, it might find a useful place in graduate seminars on Chinese Buddhism. It will certainly not supersede more specialised studies of individual translators and their works, but it does provide an overview which is otherwise not easily available to students.

As might be expected from a volume whose advisory board is staffed exclusively by Chinese scholars, it is particularly strong on the contributions of Chinese scholarship to the study of translation. It is indeed most useful to have a guide to that body of work, some of which may be unfamiliar to scholars in the West. The book is unfortunately weaker on the contributions of those who write in English and European languages. For example, although there is an extended discussion of the meaning of the terms ‘hu’ and ‘fan’, one seeks in vain for any mention of seminal works such as Daniel Boucher's article “On Hu and Fan Again: the Transmission of ‘Barbarian’ Manuscripts to China”, (The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 23 no. 1 (2000), pp. 7–28). The translation and discussion of passages relating to the ‘Great Cloud Sutra’ and Empress Wu (pp. 172–173 and 195–197) are severely compromised by the lack of reference to the extensive work on this topic by Antonino Forte (see, most importantly, his Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century: Inquiry into the Nature, Authors and Function of the Tunhuang Document S. 6502, Followed by an Annotated Translation, (Naples, Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1976); and the heavily revised and much expanded second edition, (Kyoto, Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2005). If the treatment of western scholarship is a little skimpy, then Japanese scholarship is barely even mentioned. Given the great interest that Japanese scholars have taken in the languages of Buddhism and the transmission of the tradition from India to East Asia, there is no doubt a great deal of relevant work that could have been drawn upon here. It is a little unsettling to discover that not even the most basic Japanese dictionaries for the study of Buddhist texts and terminology appear to have been consulted. Instead one finds the unreliable and outdated dictionary of Soothill and Hodous (1937) cited repeatedly in place of the many superior Japanese reference works that are commonly available.

Although the book appears to have been carefully checked by experts in translation, there are many inconsistencies and errors in rendering Indic terms that could have been prevented by having an expert who works with Buddhist Sanskrit materials read the manuscript, even once. Diacritical marks, in particular, are applied in a slap-dash manner throughout the book. ‘Sarvâsti-vāda-vinaya-bhiksu-pratimoksa’ (p. 77), for example, is a pretty ugly attempt at a title which might be better transcribed as ‘Sarvāstivāda Vinaya bhikṣu-prātimokṣa’. The English renderings of titles of Buddhist texts do not always seem to hit the mark: is “Verses on Sublime Truth” a standard translation of the title of the Dharmapāda (p. 60)? The choice of “Sutra on the Land of the Practice of Tao” for the Chinese title Xiuxing daodi jing 修行道地經 (p. 54, n. 54) seems to be based on an overly literal reading of di 地 as ‘land’. In Buddhist sources, it often means ‘stage’ and translates the Sanskrit term bhūmi, as in the ‘Yogācārabhūmi sūtra’, which is how this Chinese title might be back-translated. This is a particularly noticeable inconsistency, since the title Dadao di jing 大道地經 is rendered (more accurately) as ‘Sutra of the Stages in the Great Way’ (p. 86, n. 128).

There are some minor errors: on p. 67, one character appears to be missing in the Chinese given for the catalogue called Jinglun dulu. The reference to the “Western Xia”, occurring as it does in a fifth-century source (p. 112), cannot be to the Tangut kingdom of 1038–1227 ce. ‘Huiji’ (p. 124) is more usually read ‘Kuaiji’.

In conclusion, this is a useful volume which provides interesting perspectives on the history of translation in China, especially the Buddhist project. But it should not be used as the sole guide to the literature of Buddhist translation – the reader should not hesitate to consult more reliable reference works and studies of that material.