Written Vernacular Translation

Unlike vernacular reading, which required readers to construct their own translations as they read, written vernacular translation produced a fixed text. Translation was widespread in East Asia, albeit rather less so in Japan; it was mostly undertaken by the societies that imported texts from China, rather than being undertaken in China as a kind of cultural export. After the invention of han’gŭl in the middle of the fifteenth century, an extensive range of Buddhist, Confucian, and other works was translated into Korean: as in Vietnam, most of these took the form of hybrid texts which included both the Sinitic original and the translation, and the object seems to have been to provide a translation for the sake of beginners learning how to read Sinitic texts. In Japan such hybrid editions were much rarer and it was more common for translations to replace the original.