There was something of a tussle within the family over who would translate Dr Chao's prose into English. Her daughter did much of the work, only for Chao's linguist husband to step in and pepper the account with hectoring qualifications - 'There is no subjunctive perfect in Chinese,' he harrumphs, in an entirely unnecessary footnote to a paragraph about what to say when someone serves you Shark's Fin Soup. But at the end of the family feuding a firm text remained, often in quaintly off-kilter English, and with a few translation decisions that would endure.
J. Clements, The Emperor's feast (2021), 162
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