Abstract

This paper argues that handy translation strategies and a proper view of the original text, instead of talent and educational background, are the major reasons for good translations, by using the example of Y. R. Chao’s translations of the Alice duology. By reviewing and comparing existing research papers, this paper tries to identify current misunderstandings of the duology as well as of their translations. Then by applying Chao’s translation philosophy (represented by the dimensions of fidelity) to the analysis of the translated poem “Jabberwocky,” tentative answers to existing confusions are provided. Then problems of Chao’s dimensions of fidelity are discussed. In the end, an example is presented to show how translation strategies like those of Chao’s can practically lead to better translations.

Abstract

Fayi 法意, translated by Yan Fu 嚴復 at the beginning of the twentieth century, was one of the earliest Chinese translations of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws. While the majority of current research concerns the translated text, little focus has been placed on its paratexts, including Yan Fu’s preface. This study argues that the biographic preface Mengdesijiu liezhuan 孟德斯鳩列傳 in Fayi was not completely written by Yan Fu as is generally accepted, but in fact was translated from an English preface. However, it is at the same time a rewriting of Montesquieu due to the translator’s multiple motivations. As a translator, moderate reformist, and renowned scholar, Yan Fu created a new image of Montesquieu out of the need for book promotion, his political stand, and academic interests. By adopting different translation strategies, not only did Yan Fu succeed in advertising the book, but he also conveyed his prudent attitude towards the then-revolutionary movements and his concurring of Montesquieu’s academic views. This case study will enrich our understanding of the translator Yan Fu and his work Fayi, and also shed light on translation-related paratextual studies in that even a translated preface can be seen as a potential site for the translator’s creative intervention.

Abstract

In the translation history of the Qing Code, George Jamieson used his translation to map a reform route that was neglected in Chinese legal history. Based on first-hand archival material, this article reconstructs the untrodden route by recovering Jamieson’s vision on the value of Qing family law in the new era. Having outlined the legal and social conditions that boosted his assurance, it proceeds to analyze the message he hoped to convey to Chinese lawmakers by probing his opposition to drastic changes and advocacy for gradual reform. In the face of an imminent legal reform, Jamieson attached importance to “selecting” and “adapting” those parts of foreign law that could accommodate native institutions. His dialogue with modern English law in translating Qing marriage law set a model in this regard.

Abstract

The theory of Eco-translatology (shengtai fanyixue 生態翻譯學) sees translation processes as part of a system of interdependencies that can be investigated in ecological and biological terms. While explicitly appropriating the principles of Darwinian evolutionism and claiming to draw inspiration from both traditional Chinese wisdom and modern ecological thought, Eco-translatology presents itself as an autochthonous theory with a strong international outreach. Through an analysis of the scholarly endeavor of Eco-translatology, this paper seeks to point out that its tenets resonate significantly with the policies of knowledge production of the contemporary People’s Republic of China and, more generally, with its national ideological agenda. It also intends to show how this self-proclaimed discipline endorses the promotion of a “Chinese discourse” in the field of translation studies, one that would reposition Chinese scholars and theories within the international scientific community, ultimately contributing to the construction and consolidation of its national academic soft power.

Abstract

When the Jesuit missionaries set foot in China to proselytize, their translations of Western anatomies for Chinese readers and of Chinese medicinal texts for Western readers opened up new spaces and new imaginative geographies. While encountering two different perceptions and systems of medical knowledge, one of which was inward looking, the other focused on dissection and anatomy, the Jesuits employed different strategies and linguistic knowledge in their translations to negotiate non-linguistic knowledge represented by the spaces of the body. Inheriting the Aristotelian tradition of natural philosophy and the Galenic interpretation of the human body and the Four Humors, the Jesuits progressed from presenting the Western body and the Chinese body/medicine as a dichotomy in Taixi renshen shuo gai 泰西人身說概 (Outline of Western theories of the human body), to the accommodated Latin translation of the Chinese body and pulse by Michał Boym (1612–1959), and then to the outward visual presentation of Western anatomy in Dominique Parrenin’s (1665–1741) translation for the Kangxi Emperor.

This paper will first present the different inclinations of the two medical systems—the inward and abstract mapping of the Chinese body and the outward visual presentation of the Western body—and then examine how the Jesuit missionary-translators crossed linguistic and cultural barriers to perceive the space of the human body via the languages and terminologies in their translations. It aims to present the Jesuits’ efforts navigating through different medical systems on a shared space of body, while facing criticism and misunderstanding from two differently oriented medical systems and philosophies. It is such negotiations of languages and translated terms for the organs and veins of the human body, and the non-linguistic knowledge of the shared space of the body, that demonstrate the Jesuits’ trans-cultural perception of the human body.