The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire

A fascinating history of China’s relations with the West—told through the lives of two eighteenth-century translators

The 1793 British embassy to China, which led to Lord George Macartney’s fraught encounter with the Qianlong emperor, has often been viewed as a clash of cultures fueled by the East’s lack of interest in the West. In The Perils of Interpreting, Henrietta Harrison presents a more nuanced picture, ingeniously shifting the historical lens to focus on Macartney’s two interpreters ...