Cecil Clementi – Cantonese Love Songs, 1904

Cantonese Love-Songs (1904, Oxford: Clarendon Press) is a 2-volume translated by British colonial official and former Governor of Hong Kong (and best friend of Sir Reginald Johnston), Sir Cecil Clementi. Based on the vernacular ballads (Yue’ou, 粵謳) written by Zhao Ziyong (招子庸), a 19th-century Chinese scholar from Guangdong. Volume I contains the original Chinese text and a glossary while Volume II features the English translation, a detailed introduction, and explanatory notes representing one of the earliest systematic English-language academic renditions of Cantonese vernacular literature. Clementi’s translation framed the ballads as romantic elegies, softening some of the raw social and political realities of the original courtesan laments. If you’d like to read Clementi’s translations they’re on Internet Archive here and there’s a couple below…