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Translation Standard in China: A Survey

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Abstract

What constitutes excellence in translation? The answer made by Yan Fu at the start of a great era of translation in modern China has had a lasting effect. Writing in 1898 in the preface of his own translation of Thomas Henry Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, Yan laid down this criterion: Translation has to do three difficult things: to be faithful, expressive and elegant. For a translation to be faithful to the original is difficult enough, and yet if it is not expressive, it is tantamount to having no translation. Hence expressiveness should also be required….

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Notes

  1. 1.

    《天演论》 译例言; 罗编, 136。(Luo Xinzhang, ed. On Translation. Beijing: Commercial Press, 1984 (hereafter referred to as “Luo”), p. 138.

  2. 2.

    《读书月刊》 1931 年第 3 期; 罗编, 267页注 [3]。(Luo, 287n. 3)

  3. 3.

    《二心集》, 1932; 罗编, 276。(Luo, 276)

  4. 4.

    《瞿秋白来信》; 罗编, 276。(Luo, 276)

  5. 5.

    《再论翻译》; 罗编, 281。(Luo, 281)

  6. 6.

    《瞿秋白来信》; 罗编, 267。(Luo, 267)

  7. 7.

    《柏拉图<巴曼尼得斯篇>序》; 罗编, 445。(Luo, 445)

  8. 8.

    陈康: 同上文; 罗编, 444。(Ibid.)

  9. 9.

    《管锥编》, 1101; 罗编, 23。(Luo, 23)

  10. 10.

    《谈文学翻译书》; 罗编, 694。(Luo, 694)

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© 2015 Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Wang, Z. (2015). Translation Standard in China: A Survey. In: Degrees of Affinity. China Academic Library. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45475-6_17

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