There are several reasons to believe that the intralingual translation paradigm is relevant to account for textual transmission chains in classical and premodern China. One reason is the prevalence of diglossic or pluriglossic situations in Chinese. Another reason is the proximity between translation and commentary, to the extent that it is at times difficult to draw a clear line between the two practices, as has been noted by Translation Studies specialists. By chains of transmission of textual knowledge, I mean the way in which the knowledge conveyed by the text has been transmitted, most often through some kind of alteration of the original text. Commented or glossed editions, rewritten versions, re-creations or adaptations resulting from genre-hopping, the practice of quotation, and critical discourses are some examples of these multiform modes of (re)transmission. Philological traditions relating to Chinese texts of the classical and premodern periods have of course long paid attention to these phenomena. They have, however, less often questioned the tools used to account for them. In the midst of the ever-increasing accumulation of data, but also of the exponential availability of texts, their methods remain remarkably empirical, not to say sometimes impressionistic. The result can be subjective appraisals based on assumptions, where intuition prevails over the observation of verifiable facts. A discourse on the relevance of digital humanities, particularly in the literary or para-literary fields, remains largely to be developed. The very idea of digital humanities meets with a great deal of resistance; it is often accused of claiming to replace traditional scholarship, or even of offering no real contribution susceptible of renewing existing issues. It is undoubtedly essential, more than is the case today, that this development should stem from the demand of researchers. My contribution will start from the position of a specialist in late imperial literature who presents himself as a simple user, without any competence in digital humanities, but who sees the contribution that the development of new tools would represent in a particular area of the transmission of textual knowledge. This sector, that of the rewriting of narratives from literary language sources into vernacular stories (the huaben 話本 of the late Ming-early Qing period), appears to be typical of a situation of textual as well as epistemological complexity. The study of the transmission of textual knowledge in this field implies concomitantly taking into account multiple levels of textual alterations, which careful examination shows that the scholars devoted great technical know-how to. It is possible to describe and deconstruct this know-how, for example through the study of micro-strategies of rewriting and the description of subtle discursive variations. Beyond the technical description, but based on its in-depth exploration, the analysis of these complex processes allows for a debate of an epistemological nature. The textual know-how of the literati invariably reveals the presence of a common paradigm, that of translation, but translation in all the ambiguity of the term, i.e. where it is inseparable from a tendency to interpreting, to altering, to produce a text that is note a mere duplication of the previous one. This networking of plural texts is the very nature of commentary, a discursive relocation where, to say it in Peirce's way, “the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alternative sign.” and “a sign is not a sign”—in the linguistic sense—unless it “translates itself into another sign in which it is more fully developed.” It is typical that research, in the Sinological tradition, on the rewriting mechanisms that led to the production of these narratives of the Ming-Qing transition, has been expressed mostly in general terms, with descriptions that are usually reluctant to go into the precise details of the transformation processes involved in the passage from one text to another. What is needed to describe and analyse these processes is to enter into completely new dimensions of complexity. This can only be achieved by developing new methodologies, which in turn call for solution proposals from the field of digital humanities. It is in this partnership that we can move towards new stages in the understanding of complex processes of textual knowledge transmission. This would not only help to better answer old questions, but also to pose new ones, as well as to develop new theoretical objects.