CEFC and Parenthèses bookstore would be delighted to see you on 29 September to attend the following seminar:

« Scholarly madness: the history of the Grand Ricci encyclopaedic dictionary-the largest bilingual dictionary of Chinese ever compiled in the West » (on the 400th anniversary of Matteo Ricci’s death).

by Claude Haberer, chairman of Association Ricci du grand dictionnaire français de la langue chinoise.

Date: Wednesday 29 September @ 7pm
Venue: Room Segalen, 25/F, Admiralty Centre, Tower 2,
18 Harcourt Road, Hong Kong
Reservation & Contact: Paul Chauvet
promotio@cefc.com.hk / tel: 28766912

Click here to dowload this flyer as a pdf.

Over 400 years the understanding between China and the West has been helped by the dictionaries patiently compiled by scholars, most of them Jesuit priests. Heirs of this formidable work, a group of Jesuits leaving China compiled over 50 years, with the help of more than 300 contributors, the largest and most comprehensive bilingual dictionary of the Chinese language ever done in the West, with its 9,000 pages, 13,000 individual characters and 300,000 words and exp expressions.
It is the history, spirit and philological content of this adventure and encyclopaedia which will be the topic of this talk.

Fond of paradox, Claude Haberer is both chairman of Association Ricci du grand dictionnaire français de la langue chinoise and a banker. He holds a Master degree from Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales and an MBA from France’s top business school, HEC. He has spent half of his working life in Asia, first moving to Hong-Kong in 1988 and also spending years in Taiwan and Singapore. Early on a keen participant in the Ricci Institutes’ (Taipei and Paris) seminars on classical texts and Chinese thought he became involved in the Grand Dictionary project in the late 1990s. In 2002 he succeeded Fr. Claude Larre, sj, as the Association’s chai chairman.
He is also the author of « Between Tiger and Dragon, a History of Relations between the Philippines and China and Taiwan » (Manila, Anvil Pub., 2009).
He lives and works in Hong-Kong.

ALL INTERESTED ARE WELCOME!
This seminar will be held in English
Jean-François Huchet, Director of the CEFC,
will chair the session.
Snacks and drinks will be served after the seminar.
Please confirm your attendance