Abstract
Governance in the southern frontier of early imperial China was not a simply the transplantation of a northern template, but an ongoing practice of “translation” across speech, tax and labor obligations, and social status. This article examines a judicial dossier preserved among the Zoumalou Western Han manuscripts excavated from Changsha, to reveal how the early empire governed populations labeled “Man-Yi” through local speech and differentiated institutional arrangements. Building on existing studies and focusing on two interpreters, the article brings Chu speech, commuted obligations, and judicial writing into a single analytical framework. It argues that “translation” was not merely a technique of linguistic communication, but also part of a mechanism of administrative legibility through which empire made difference recordable, taxable, and traceable. By reconstructing the role of interpreters in taxation and interrogation, the article reveals the differentiated governance of southern highland communities: they were incorporated into household registration, fiscal obligations, and rank hierarchies, yet continued to rely on local intermediaries, payment in kind, and translation to maintain their distinctive position. The article also reconstructs a local community that was largely invisible in transmitted sources, thereby illuminating the everyday workings of rule on the Qin-Han southern frontier: through dialect, material commutation, and documentary procedure, empire made difference itself into a foundation of governance.