Chinese Translation Theory
Encyclopedia
Chinese translation theory was born out of contact with vassal
Vassal
A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held...

 states during the Zhou Dynasty
Zhou Dynasty
The Zhou Dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang Dynasty and preceded the Qin Dynasty. Although the Zhou Dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history, the actual political and military control of China by the Ji family lasted only until 771 BC, a period known as...

. It developed through translations of Buddhist scripture into Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

. It is a response to the universals of the experience of translation and to the specifics of the experience of translating from specific source languages into Chinese. It also developed in the context of Chinese literary and intellectual tradition.

The Modern Standard Chinese word fanyi 翻譯 "translate; translation" compounds fan "turn over; cross over; translate" and yi "translate; interpret". Some related synonyms are tongyi 通譯 "interpret; translate", chuanyi 傳譯 "interpret; translate", and zhuanyi 轉譯 "translate; retranslate".

The Chinese classics contain various words meaning "interpreter; translator", for instance, sheren 舌人 (lit. "tongue person") and fanshe 反舌 (lit. "return tongue"). The Classic of Rites
Classic of Rites
The Classic of Rites , also known as the Book of Rites, Book of Customs, the Record of Rites, was one of the Chinese Five Classics of the Confucian canon. It described the social forms, governmental system, and ancient/ceremonial rites of the Zhou Dynasty...

records four regional words: ji 寄 "send; entrust; rely on" for Dongyi
Dongyi
Dongyi was a collective term for people in eastern China and in lands located to the east of ancient China. People referred to as Dongyi vary across the ages.The early Dongyi culture was one of earliest neolithic cultures in China....

 東夷 "Eastern Yi-barbarians", xiang 象 "be like; resemble; image" for Nanman
Nanman
Nanman were aboriginal tribes who lived in southwestern China. They may have been related to the Sanmiao, dated to around the 3rd century BC. The Nanman were multiple ethnic groups including the Miao, the Kinh, the Thai, and some Tibeto-Burman groups such as the Bai. There was never a single...

 南蠻 "Southern Man-barbarians", didi 狄鞮 "Di-barbarian boots" for Xirong 西戎 "Western Rong-barbarians", and yi 譯 "translate; interpret" for Beidi
Beidi
Beidi or Northern Di were groups of people who lived to the north of what was then China during the Zhou Dynasty. By the end of the dynasty they were mostly conquered or absorbed by the Chinese....

 北狄 "Northern Di-barbarians".
In those five regions, the languages of the people were not mutually intelligible, and their likings and desires were different. To make what was in their minds apprehended, and to communicate their likings and desires, (there were officers), — in the east, called transmitters; in the south, representationists; in the west, Tî-tîs; and in the north, interpreters. (王制 "The Royal Regulations", tr. James Legge
James Legge
James Legge was a noted Scottish sinologist, a Scottish Congregationalist, representative of the London Missionary Society in Malacca and Hong Kong , and first professor of Chinese at Oxford University...

 1885 vol. 27, pp. 229-230)


A Western Han work attributes a dialogue about translation to Confucius
Confucius
Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....

. Confucius advises a ruler who wishes to learn foreign languages not to bother. Confucius tells the ruler to focus on governance and let the translators handle translation.

The earliest bit of translation theory may be the phrase "names should follow their bearers, while things should follow China." In other words, names should be transliterated, while things should be translated by meaning.

In the late Qing Dynasty and the Republican Period, reformers such as Liang Qichao
Liang Qichao
Liang Qichao |Styled]] Zhuoru, ; Pseudonym: Rengong) was a Chinese scholar, journalist, philosopher and reformist during the Qing Dynasty , who inspired Chinese scholars with his writings and reform movements...

, Hu Shi and Zhou Zuoren
Zhou Zuoren
Zhou Zuoren was a Chinese writer, primarily known as an essayist and a translator. He was the younger brother of Lu Xun , the second of three brothers.-Early life:...

 began looking at translation practice and theory of the great translators in Chinese history.

Zhi Qian (3rd c. AD)

Zhi Qian
Zhi Qian
Zhi Qian was a Chinese Buddhist layman of Yuezhi ancestry who translated a wide range of Indian Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. He was the grandson of an immigrant from the country of the Great Yuezhi, an area that overlapped to at least some extent with the territory of the Kushan Empire...

 (支謙)'s preface (序) is the first work whose purpose is to express an opinion about translation practice. The preface was included in a work of the Liang Dynasty
Liang Dynasty
The Liang Dynasty , also known as the Southern Liang Dynasty , was the third of the Southern dynasties in China and was followed by the Chen Dynasty...

. It recounts an historical anecdote of 224AD, at the beginning of the Three Kingdoms
Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms period was a period in Chinese history, part of an era of disunity called the "Six Dynasties" following immediately the loss of de facto power of the Han Dynasty rulers. In a strict academic sense it refers to the period between the foundation of the state of Wei in 220 and the...

 period. A party of Buddhist monks came to Wuchang. One of them, Zhu Jiangyan by name, was asked to translate some passage from scripture. He did so, in rough Chinese. When Zhi Qian questioned the lack of elegance, another monk, named Wei Qi (維衹), responded that the meaning of the Buddha should be translated simply, without loss, in an easy-to-understand manner: literary adornment is unnecessary. All present concurred and quoted two traditional maxims: Laozi
Laozi
Laozi was a mystic philosopher of ancient China, best known as the author of the Tao Te Ching . His association with the Tao Te Ching has led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Taoism...

's "beautiful words are untrue, true words are not beautiful" and Confucius
Confucius
Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....

's "speech cannot be fully recorded by writing, and speech cannot fully capture meaning".

Zhi Qian's own translations of Buddhist texts are elegant and literary, so the "direct translation" advocated in the anecdote is likely Wei Qi's position, not Zhi Qian's.

Dao An (314-385AD)

Dao An
Dao An
Dao An was a Buddhist monk of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, originating from what is now Hebei Province. Mainly important today as a translator of Buddhist scripture. He was active in Xiangyang until the Former Qin ruler Fu Jian 苻堅 captured the city in 379 and had Dao An brought to live in Changan...

 focused on loss in translation. His theory is the Five Forms of Loss (五失本):
  1. Changing the word order
    Word order
    In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...

    . Sanskrit
    Sanskrit
    Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

     word order is free with a tendency to SOV. Chinese is SVO.
  2. Adding literary embellishment where the original is in plain style.
  3. Eliminating repetitiveness in argumentation and panegyric (頌文).
  4. Cutting the concluding summary section (義說).
  5. Cutting the recapitulative material in introductory section.


Dao An criticized other translators for loss in translation, asking: how they would feel if a translator cut the boring bits out of classics like the Shi Jing
Shi Jing
The Classic of Poetry , translated variously as the Book of Songs, the Book of Odes, and often known simply as its original name The Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems and songs. It comprises 305 poems and songs, with many range from the 10th to the 7th centuries BC...

 or the Classic of History
Classic of History
The Classic of History is a compilation of documentary records related to events in ancient history of China. It is also commonly known as the Shàngshū , or simply Shū...

?

He also expanded upon the difficulty of translation, with his theory of the Three Difficulties (三不易):
  1. Communicating the Dharma
    Dharma
    Dharma means Law or Natural Law and is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. In the context of Hinduism, it refers to one's personal obligations, calling and duties, and a Hindu's dharma is affected by the person's age, caste, class, occupation, and gender...

     to a different audience from the one the Buddha addressed.
  2. Translating the words of a saint.
  3. Translating texts which have been painstakingly composed by generations of disciples.

Kumarajiva (344-413AD)

Kumarajiva
Kumarajiva
Kumārajīva; was a Kuchean Buddhist monk, scholar, and translator. He first studied teachings of the Sarvastivada schools, later studied under Buddhasvāmin, and finally became a Mahāyāna adherent, studying the Madhyamaka doctrine of Nagarjuna. Kumārajīva settled in Chang'an, which was the imperial...

’s translation practice was to translate for meaning. The story goes that one day Kumarajiva criticized his disciple Sengrui
Kumarajiva
Kumārajīva; was a Kuchean Buddhist monk, scholar, and translator. He first studied teachings of the Sarvastivada schools, later studied under Buddhasvāmin, and finally became a Mahāyāna adherent, studying the Madhyamaka doctrine of Nagarjuna. Kumārajīva settled in Chang'an, which was the imperial...

 for translating “heaven sees man, and man sees heaven” (天見人,人見天). Kumarajiva felt that “man and heaven connect, the two able to see each other” (人天交接,兩得相見) would be more idiomatic, though heaven sees man, man sees heaven is perfectly idiomatic.

In another tale, Kumarajiva discusses the problem of translating incantations at the end of sutras. In the original there is attention to aesthetics, but the sense of beauty and the literary form (dependent on the particularities of Sanskrit) are lost in translation. It is like chewing up rice and feeding it to people (嚼飯與人).

Huiyuan (334-416AD)

Huiyuan's theory of translation is middling, in a positive sense. It is a synthesis that avoids extremes of elegant (文雅) and plain (質樸). With elegant translation, "the language goes beyond the meaning" (文過其意) of the original. With plain translation, "the thought surpasses the wording" (理勝其辭). For Huiyuan, "the words should not harm the meaning" (文不害意). A good translator should “strive to preserve the original” (務存其本).

Sengrui (371-438AD)

Sengrui
Sengrui
Sengrui was born in what is now Henan. He became a monk at age 18, traveling extensively from age 24, meeting among others Dao An. He ended up in Changan, where he took part in Kumarajiva's translation project. In fact, he is generally seen as Kumarajiva’s principal disciple....

 investigated problems in translating the names of things. This is of course an important traditional concern whose locus classicus is the Confucian exhortation to “rectify names” (正名). This is not merely of academic concern to Sengrui, for poor translation imperils Buddhism. Sengrui was critical of his teacher Kumarajiva
Kumarajiva
Kumārajīva; was a Kuchean Buddhist monk, scholar, and translator. He first studied teachings of the Sarvastivada schools, later studied under Buddhasvāmin, and finally became a Mahāyāna adherent, studying the Madhyamaka doctrine of Nagarjuna. Kumārajīva settled in Chang'an, which was the imperial...

's casual approach to translating names, attributing it to Kumarajiva's lack of familiarity with the Chinese tradition of linking names to essences (名實).

Sengyou (445-518AD)

Much of the early material of earlier translators was gathered by Sengyou
Sengyou
Sengyou was a Buddhist monk, hailing from Nanjing, then called Jiankang . He became a monk at 14 at which time he studied and eventually taught the Vinaya...

 and would have been lost but for him. Sengyou’s approach to translation resembles Huiyuan's, in that both saw good translation as the middle way between elegance and plainness. However, unlike Huiyuan Sengyou expressed admiration for Kumarajiva’s elegant translations.

Xuanzang (600-664AD)

Xuanzang
Xuanzang
Xuanzang was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period...

’s theory is the Five Untranslatables (五種不翻), or five instances where one should transliterate:
  1. Secrets: Dharani
    Dharani
    A ' is a type of ritual speech similar to a mantra. The terms dharani and satheesh may be seen as synonyms, although they are normally used in distinct contexts....

     陀羅尼, Sanskrit ritual speech or incantations, which includes mantra
    Mantra
    A mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of "creating transformation"...

    s.
  2. Polysemy
    Polysemy
    Polysemy is the capacity for a sign or signs to have multiple meanings , i.e., a large semantic field.Charles Fillmore and Beryl Atkins’ definition stipulates three elements: the various senses of a polysemous word have a central origin, the links between these senses form a network, and ...

    : bhaga (as in the Bhagavad Gita
    Bhagavad Gita
    The ' , also more simply known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text, and in particular, as an Upanishad in its own right, one of the several books that constitute general Vedic tradition...

    ) 薄伽, which means comfortable, flourishing, dignity, name, lucky, esteemed.
  3. None in China: jambu
    Jambu
    Jambu or jumbu could refer to :* Jambu, jambu air or jambu bol, a local term for Syzygium fruit* Jambu or jambu batu, a local term for guavas* Jambul or Jambu tree* Jambu Fruit-dove, a species of Fruit Dove ....

     tree 閻浮樹, which does not grow in China.
  4. Deference to the past: the translation for anuttara-samyak-sambodhi is already established as Anouputi 阿耨菩提.
  5. To inspire respect and righteousness: Prajna
    Prajña
    Prajñā or paññā is wisdom, understanding, discernment or cognitive acuity. Such wisdom is understood to exist in the universal flux of being and can be intuitively experienced through meditation...

     般若 instead of “wisdom” (智慧).

Yan Fu (1898)

Yan Fu
Yan Fu
Yan Fu was a Chinese scholar and translator, most famous for introducing western ideas, including Darwin's "natural selection," to China in the late 19th century.-Life:...

 is famous for his three-facet theory of translation; namely, faithfulness (信 xìn), be true to the original in spirit; expressiveness (達 dá), be accessible to the target reader; and elegance (雅 yǎ), be in the language the target reader accepts as being educated.

Of the three facets, the second is the most important one. If the meaning of the translated text is not accessible to the reader, there is no difference between having translated the text and not having translated the text at all. In order to facilitate comprehension, word order should be changed, Chinese examples may replace original ones, and even people's names should be rendered Chinese. Yan Fu's theory of translation is based on his experience with translating works of social sciences from English into Chinese. The typical misapplication of the theory is to extend it to the translation of literary works. The two typical misinterpretations of the theory are: (a) interpreting accessibility as clarity or expressiveness, (b) overgeneralizing Yan Fu's specific readership to general readership. According to Yan Fu, good translation is one that is true to the original in spirit, accessible to the target reader in meaning, and attractive to the target reader in style.

Liang Qichao (1920)

Liang Qichao
Liang Qichao
Liang Qichao |Styled]] Zhuoru, ; Pseudonym: Rengong) was a Chinese scholar, journalist, philosopher and reformist during the Qing Dynasty , who inspired Chinese scholars with his writings and reform movements...

 put these three qualities of a translation in the same order, fidelity first, then clarity, and only then elegance.

Lin Yutang (1933)

Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang was a Chinese writer and inventor. His informal but polished style in both Chinese and English made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, and his compilations and translations of classic Chinese texts into English were bestsellers in the West.-Youth:Lin was born in...

 stressed the responsibility of the translator to the original, to the reader, and to art. To fulfill this responsibility, the translator needs to meet standards of fidelity (忠實), smoothness (通順) and beauty.

Lu Xun (1935)

Lu Xun
Lu Xun
Lu Xun or Lu Hsün , was the pen name of Zhou Shuren , one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered by many to be the leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in baihua as well as classical Chinese...

's most famous dictum relating to translation is "I'd rather be faithful than smooth" (寧信而不順).

Ai Siqi (1937)

Ai Siqi
Ai Siqi
Àisīqí is the penname of Li Sheng-Hsuen , a Yunnan Mongol Chinese philosopher and author. He was born in Yunnan, later traveling to Hong Kong, where he studied English and French at a Protestant school and was exposed to Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People and Marxism...

 described the relationships between fidelity, clarity and elegance in terms of Western ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...

, where clarity and elegance are to fidelity as qualities are to being
Being
Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...

.

Zhou Zuoren (1944)

Zhou Zuoren
Zhou Zuoren
Zhou Zuoren was a Chinese writer, primarily known as an essayist and a translator. He was the younger brother of Lu Xun , the second of three brothers.-Early life:...

 assigned weightings, 50% of translation is fidelity, 30% is clarity, and 20% elegance.

Zhu Guangqian (1944)

Zhu Guangqian
Zhu Guangqian
Zhu Guangqian 朱光潛 is the founder of the study of aesthetics in 20th c. China. After earning his B.A. from Hong Kong University, he went abroad to study aesthetics at the University of Edinburgh and University College, London, then to France and the University of Strasbourg where he earned his...

 wrote that fidelity in translation is the root which you can strive to approach but never reach. This formulation perhaps invokes the traditional idea of returning to the root in Daoist philosophy.

Fu Lei (1951)

Fu Lei
Fu Lei
Fu Lei , was a famous translator and art critic. He was born near Shanghai and raised by his mother. He studied art and art theory in France from 1928–1932. Upon his return to China, he taught in Shanghai and worked as a journalist and art critic until he took up translating...

 held that translation is like painting: what is essential is not formal resemblance but rather spiritual resemblance (神似).

Qian Zhongshu (1964)

Qian Zhongshu
Qian Zhongshu
Qian Zhongshu was a Chinese literary scholar and writer, known for his wit and erudition.He is best known for his satiric novel Fortress Besieged . His works of non-fiction are characterised by their large amount of quotations in both Chinese and Western languages...

 wrote that the highest standard of translation is transformation (化, the power of transformation in nature): bodies are sloughed off, but the spirit (精神), appearance and manner (姿致) are the same as before (故我, the old me or the old self).

See also

  • Translation
    Translation
    Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...


Online free english to chinese translation tool

Source

  • A History of Translation Theory in China (Chinese original by Chen Fukang 陳福康.中國譯學理論史稿.上海外語教育出版社)
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