Chan Kim Boon: A Pioneer Translator of Classical Chinese Novels into Baba Malay

Authors

Lan Lin, Beibu Gulf University, Qinzhou, Guangxi, ChinaFollow
Wei Huang, Beibu Gulf University, Qinzhou, Guangxi, ChinaFollow

Abstract

Chan Kim Boon’s contribution to literary developments in colonial Singapore and his place in the larger social and cultural history of colonial Southeast Asia, especially in the Straits Settlements, has remained largely unrecognised. At the turn of the century, when the English-educated Straits Chinese business elite under the leadership of Lim Boon Keng and Song Ong Siang embarked upon a programme of social reform of Peranakan society, Chan Kim Boon, equally well-versed in English, Chinese and Malay, undertook the task of translating classical Chinese novels into Baba Malay in order to provide socially and politically edifying reading material for a Peranakan readership. This massive undertaking, covering 16 years and 72 volumes of labour, won him a position of high esteem and respect among his fellow Peranakan contemporaries, as well as Republican Chinese elites with ties to Singapore, such as Qiu Fengjia. His relative obscurity today may be attributable to the decline of Baba Malay itself with the spread of English and Chinese education in the 20th century. This paper will examine his life and work at the intersection of three different socio-cultural milieus which constituted part of the cosmopolitan mosaic of then colonial Singapore.

Recommended Citation

Lin, Lan and Huang, Wei (2021) "Chan Kim Boon: A Pioneer Translator of Classical Chinese Novels into Baba Malay," Malaysian Journal of Chinese Studies: Vol. 10: No. 2, Article 2.
Available at: https://mjcs.newera.edu.my/journal/vol10/iss2/2