Duncan POUPARD

Associate Professor, Department of Translation |
Associate Professor (by courtesy), Centre for China Studies

PhD Translation, The University of Hong Kong
MA Sinology, SOAS, UK
BA History, The University of York, UK

Room 117, 1/F, Leung Kau Kui Building

duncan@cuhk.edu.hk

Duncan Poupard is Associate Professor in the Department of Translation at CUHK.

He received his MA in Sinology (with distinction) from SOAS, and PhD from the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong (recipient of the 2016-2017 Li Ka Shing Award for Best PhD Thesis).

Duncan researches minority literature and writing in China from a translational perspective. He looks at the movement between languages and writing systems, with a focus on Sino-Tibetan minorities in China, in particular the Naxi people and their unique pictographic script. He is an advocate of linguistic diversity and an interdisciplinary approach to the study of minority literatures and cultures.

Research Interests

  • Minority writing
  • World literature
  • Cultural translation
  • Naxi studies
  • Tibetan studies

Representative Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

2023

Poupard, Duncan. 2023. A Pictographic Origin Myth from Southwest China. Leiden: Leiden University Press.

2022

Poupard, Duncan. 2022. Translation/re-Creation: Southwest Chinese Naxi Manuscripts in the West. London: Routledge.

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

2023

Poupard, Duncan. 2023. “In defense of Ezra Pound’s “graphological” translations”. The Translator 29:1, 61-75.

2022

Poupard, Duncan. 2022. “Ethnic minority language and Sinophone minority literature in China”, Writing Chinese: A Journal of Contemporary Sinophone Literature 1:1, 37-59.

2022

Poupard, Duncan. 2022. “Sinoxenic writing and Chinese minority literature”, Journal of Chinese Writing Systems 6:2, 147-157.

2020

Poupard, Duncan. 2020. “With the power of their forefathers: Kinship between early Tibetan ritualists and the Naxi dongba of southwest China”. Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 56, October 2020, 89-214.

2020

Poupard, Duncan. 2020. “Escaping Shangri-la: Literary Retranslation of Toponyms in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands”. Journal of Translation Studies 4:1 (2020, New Series), 51–74.

2019

Poupard, Duncan. 2019. “Reading Tibetan in the Original Chinese: Tibetan Sinophone Authors and Translation”. Asian Highlands Perspectives 58, 79-113.

2019

Poupard, Duncan. 2019. “Revitalising Naxi dongba as a ‘pictographic’ vernacular script”. Journal of Chinese Writing Systems 3:1, 53-67.

2019

Poupard, Duncan. 2019. “Translation as Logocentric Imperialism.” Translation Studies 13:1, 22-42.

2018

Poupard, Duncan. 2018. “How the Turtle Lost its Shell: Sino-Tibetan Divination Manuals and Cultural Translation”. Himalaya 38:2, 4-19.

2018

Poupard, Duncan. 2018. “Translation as hybridity in Sinophone Bai writing”. Asian Ethnicity 20:2, 210-227.

2018

Poupard, Duncan. 2018. “The Lady of Lijiang: Contextualising a Forgotten Missionary Translator of Southwest China”. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 94:2 (2018), 95-114.

2018

Poupard, Duncan. 2018. “Between the Oral and the Literary: The Case of the Naxi Dongba Texts”. Oral Tradition 32:1, 27-52.

2017

Poupard, Duncan. 2017. “The translated identities of Sinophone Naxi authors”. The Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 14:1, 189-208.

Current Research Projects

“Naxi dongba and Dunhuang Tibetan manuscripts: a comparative study”, General Research Fund, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (2024-2025)

CUHK Faculty of Arts Impact project: “The Revitalization of Naxi Dongba Script” (2017-2025)

Courses Offered

TRAN6003 Chinese-English Translation Workshop
TRAN6117 Bilingual Editing Skills
TRAN6910 Research Seminar in Translation
TRAN6824 Post-editing for Machine Translation