Lecture 2----Translation history in China.pptVIP

Translation history in China Introduction an over three thousand-year-old history of translation The earliest historical documents recording sporadic translation activities in China can be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty（1100 B. C.） xiangxu(象胥)or sheren（舌人） “The Song of Yue Nationality”（越人歌）;the first poem translated in ancient China Three peaks of translation before the May 4th Movement （1919）. The First Peak----The Translation of Buddhist Classics in the Six Dynasties（232----589）when Buddhist monks set about translating classics of Buddhism into Chinese The translation of Buddhist classics began in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and lasted more than 1,000 years till the Tang（618----907）and Northern Song Dynasties（960----1127） Several important figures Zhi Qian（支谦） “Preface to Fa Ju Jing”（《法句经》序） “follow the original intention of the author without any embroidery”(因循本旨，不加文饰) Dao An（道安） the earliest state translation school yichang（译场） “translate according to the original without any addition and deduction”(案本而传，不令有损言游字) Kumargjiva(鸠摩罗什) he applied a free translation approach to transfer the essence of the Sanskrit sutras. he firstly suggested that translators should sign their names in translated works. Xuan Zang（玄奘） the most eminent figure of the first peak in translation history Xuan Zang developed his epoch-making criteria that translation “must be truthful and intelligible to the populace”（既须求真，又须喻俗）. He summed up five cases dependant on transliteration, namely, don’t translate（a）what is mysterious（秘密故）,（b）what is multi-semantic（多义故）,（c） what is too alien to be reproduced(此无故)，（d） what is hereditary（顺古故）and（e） what is philanthropic（生善故）. Records of the Western Regions under the Reign of the Great Tang（《大唐西域记》） The Second Peak: The Translation of Books on Science and Tech nology the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties around the 17th century the arrival of Jesuit missionaries from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Poland