Yan Fu’s Thoughts of Translation.docVIP

Yan Fu?s Thoughts of Translation Abstract: Yan Fu was famous translator in Chinese history, and proposed three standards of translation. The theory made great contribution to Chinese translation history. However, with the development of society at present, Yan Fu’s theory had been out of date. More and more translators and scholars pay more attention on linguistics to translate appropriately nowadays. It is the aim to analysis this problem in the article and introduces more detailed knowledge to make flourish translation, so that it becomes true that Chinese translation develop step by step. Key words: Yan Fu;”信达雅” theory;Linguistics 中图分类号: H315.9 文献标识码: A文章编号:1672-1578(2009)11-0003-01 1 Yan Fu and his translation theory Yan Fu,was born in Fujian Province in 1853, and studied in the Naval Management School when he was fourteen years old. Yan Fu not only studied traditional lessons in Naval Management School, but also mastered English, Math, Physics and Chemistry, especially English. The experience enriched his thoughts about our country and made it easy to accept the western thought. During this period, Yan Fu was active and opens in various translation activities, and was named the first person of translation by others. Based on his translation practice and the theories put forward by Buddy translators in ancient times, he proposed three standards of translation, i.e, “信达雅”. (Xin)means the translator should be faithful to the original works. (Da) means the translatorshould use the common and fluent language to make sure that his translation can be understood completely and easily by readers.(Ya) means the translator should keep the writer’s stylewhen he translates the works. The theory was the direction of translation to the latter and developed our country’s translation theories with great degree. 2The contribution and limitation of this translation theory The theory is the most widespread guiding principle of translation in China for over a