The Construction of Colonial Narrative and Cultural Domestication in Sir Cecil Clementi’s Cantonese Love Songs

Abstract

Cantonese Love Songs, the 1904 English translation of Yue’ou by Sir Cecil Clementi, a British colonial official, stands as a major systematic rendition of Cantonese vernacular literature. However, his translation practice was deeply embedded within colonial power structures. Through close textual analysis and comparative study, this paper reveals how Clementi strategically reconstructed the source text—via title reframing, structural rearrangement, and symbolic reinterpretation—transforming Zhao Ziyong’s socially critical ballads into “Orientalist romantic elegies” that aligned with Western imaginaries of the East. Findings demonstrate that the translation erased the intrinsic connections between courtesans’ plight and broader socio-political structures, fabricating an image of the “docile and melancholic Oriental subject.” This case study exposes how colonial translation functioned as an instrument of cultural governance, while offering a fresh lens to re-examine power asymmetries in modern Sino-Western literary exchanges.