明清时期历史因素对文学翻译的影响

论文总字数：24528字

摘 要

明清时期，越来越多的人开始将科学技术领域的文章翻译成中文。本文以明清文学翻译和当时的几个历史因素为基础。通过分析当时文学翻译的特点，翻译的理论，代表性的译者及其作品，从社会生活,经济发展，甚至是政治以及当时的对外政策等角度阐述了历史因素对文学翻译的影响和意义。

关键词：历史因素；明清；文学翻译；影响

Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review………………………………………………………2
3. Overview on the General Condition in Ming and Qing Dynasty ..2

3.1 Economic condition………….…………………………………….3

3.2 Technical condition ………......………………………………........4

3.3 Cultural condition....…......……....…........……....…………...5

3.4 Political condition………………………………………………..6

1. The Influence of History on Literary Translation……………….8

4.1 Influence on the selection of words……………………………9

4.2 Influence on genre…………………………………………….9

5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………..10

Works Cited……………………………………………………………...11

1. Introduction

In the past year, the content of A Brief History of Chinese Translation impressed me a lot with the scientific translation in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. However, the introduction of the literary translation during that period could still not provide me sufficient information to know more about it.

During Ming and Qing Dynasty, the government set several institutions to undertake the translation task, including Honglu Temple, Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Huitongsiyi Institution. Those institutions was to receive western missionaries who intended to bring the western literature China. Most of the works they brought were religious. But, some of Chinese translators and Scientists preferred to get touch with more scientific work. As a result, scientists, such as Xu Guangqi, take advantage of missionaries to edit large number of translated works. Those works belonged to astronomy, calender, geography and mathematics. However, these translations were only made in court and did not affect the normal people. The only person who had an influence on Chinese scientific translation in the early Qing Dynasty was Xue Fengqi. In collaboration with the missionary Muni Pavilion, he translated a number of books on logarithmic, astronomical, and triangular aspects to enable the timely dissemination of this knowledge in the private sector (Ma Zuyi, 2004: 174).

The ups and downs in that period pushed people more eager to the success in the field of science and technology. However, till the end of the Qing Dynasty, the learned men gradually realized that the development of the science and technology needs the support of some certain theory. In another words, literary works became more and more important and began to be used to show the inner motions to others. Little by little, there came a change in the direction of translation.

According to the literature that I can get, translation learners are now rarely studying the relation between the historical factors and the literary translation. Therefore, this paper probes into the connection between the historical factors and the literary translation during Ming and Qing Dynasties.

This thesis is consisted of two main parts. The first part will concentrate on the general history condition during the Ming and Qing Dynasty. The analysis is showed from four aspects, including economic factor, technical factor, cultural factor and politic factor. The other part is about the influence of history on Chinese literature. The impact on the selection of words, narrative and genre are going to be discussed.

2. Literature Review

According to the information that I could find, the first learner who did the research on the literary translation is Xue Shaohui. During the wuxu period, she translated novels from Jules Verne together with her husband Chen Shoupeng and they became the earliest Chinese translator of Verne"s science fiction. For the first time, science fictions went into people’s eyes. After that, a systematic study on the literary translation began. To achieve more information about the literary translation, the thesis focuses on the influence of historical factors on the literary translation.

3. Overview on the General Condition in Ming and Qing Dynasty

The development of Chinese society was precocious and immature. The precocious and immature performance was showed by the developed commodity economy in China"s society, which appeared earlier than the normal level. In the commodity economy, there should exist labor and a free market. But, they could not be took advantage of. In the traditional Chinese society, there are both class opposition and the integration of villages and clan; there are both economic and super-economic forces; the relationship between urban residents and rural areas is closely integrated. Therefore, class division, occupational differentiation, and urban-rural division in Chinese society are difficult to remove.

As we all know, in Ming Dynasty, China was still playing the leading role in the world. However, at the end of Ming Dynasty, the emperor implemented the policy “Close the Border” to resisted the Japanese pirates’ attack (happened in Chinese coastal waters from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century) from the south-east border (Stavrianos, 2006:372). Since that, the economy, the technology, even the mind of people fell behind gradually. Till the Qing Dynasty, at first, the government maintained the same policy to prevent the attack from the enemies from overseas. With the time passing, the foreign countries found China was a large market. Forasmuch, many a country wanted to invade China. To prevent the invasion, Chinese governments in Qing Dynasty still did not change the “Close the Border” policy. The isolation caused by that policy led to the weakness of China in the following hundreds of years.

3.1 Economic condition

In the aspect of economy, the society experienced a lot and almost stepped into the Capitalism. However, several reasons stopped that. To begin with, the fundamental reason is that the feudal productivity reached its peak during the Ming and Qing Dynasty. Besides, the government"s amortization of acre and the local silver system also affected the two dynasties. The feudal state loosened the personal control of the peasants, which produced labor force to the budding capitalism. As a result, the socio-economic developed. However, this kind of development is extremely restricted, with the policy of “repeating agriculture and suppressing trade”, the policy of closing the country, the natural economic obstacles and some other reasons. The second reason is the easing of ethnic relations and the consolidation of multinational states. The ethnic relations between the Ming and Qing Dynasty were more moderate, which avoid large-scale internal wars. The unification of multi-ethnic countries laid the foundation for economic prosperity. Lastly, economically, the prominent commodity economy continued to develop in the Ming and Qing Dynasty. Based on this, there emerged the sprout of capitalism.

The Western countries from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth century developed very fast. The rapid development of capitalism led to the urban literature, humanistic literature, tramping literature, classical literature, and so on. To the Westerners, from the 14th century to the early 17th century, Europe was in the stage of the dissolution of feudal society and the rise of capitalism. It is the same as that in China in the same period. Agriculture, handicrafts, and commodity economies had developed further. In some parts of the Mediterranean coast and in northwestern Europe, the seeds of capitalist relations of production had emerged. The early stages of the capitalist mode of production—the workshop handicrafts had risen, and the capitalist relations of production in rural areas developed step by step.

3.2 Technical condition

The 16th century is an inflection point in the history of science and technology between China and the West. Since then, there had been a huge contrast between the development of Chinese and Western science and technology.

Judging from the nature, Chinese science and technology are traditional classical science and technology. Its main feature is inheriting old ideal and creating new ideas. Western science and technology are modern science and technology, and it began in the Renaissance "astronomy revolution." Its main feature is to explore the deep roots of the development and change of things. Chinese traditional science and technology paid attention to sorting out and summarizing ancient books and records, focusing on innovation, while western science and technology mainly through experiments to explore the law of the development of things. Most traditional Chinese science and technology attached much importance to the induction and summarization of traditional experience, while western science and technology focused on the exploration of the laws and causes of events. Finally, judging from the content and scope of the study, Chinese traditional scientific and technological achievements mostly concentrated on agronomy and some applied fields related to agronomy. The development of natural sciences is relatively slow. Western science and technology, in addition to focusing on practical fields and applications, also take into account the development of humanities.

Ming and Qing Dynasty are the last stage of Chinese feudal society. With the constant development of the society, commodity economy got a rapid development, so that the number of merchants increased sharply. This trend brought great motivation for the merchants who had a frequent contact with the litterateur to take part in the literary creation. Since then, the merchant literary sprang. Additionally, in 1960s, a great campaign which broke out as a result of the serious consequences came from the Westernization Movement, led to another popularity of another kind of literary translation, the translation of the philosophical theory. The leaders of that campaign were those who advocated the westernization movement(of the late Qing Dynasty), including Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, Li Hongzhang and so on (Wei Ziqiu, 2015: 45).

To catch up with western science and technology, or to fill up the gap in the field of that, Chinese government encouraged children to study abroad, and to learn technology. Since then, a lot of technical translation started to appear.

3.3 Cultural Condition

In the ancient time, the Chinese government carried out three prohibitions, including prohibiting the mint, limiting the voyage and controlling the state of country strictly. However, the First Opium War (Britain"s invasion of China, 1840-1842), the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (launched by Japanese imperialism to annex Korea and invade China) and some other wars made the ancient China open to the world in an extremely negative way. More and more foreigners also took this opportunity to earn their own profit. Since the middle of Ming Dynasty, the commodity economy developed rapidly, which caused great confusion in mint. The business activity was the beginning of a new change from ancient social economy to modern social economy, so that the society witnessed a huge change.

The second change happened in the field of voyage. The effect of seafaring prohibition policy on the overseas trade disappeared gradually after the tribute trade. Under that circumstances, the government wholly controlled the number of traders and goods, which couldn"t meet the need of foreign countries and Chinese traders. The trade on the sea , which means the seafaring trade , developed gradually. An increasing number of traders in Ming Dynasty forced the emperor to open the policy to support the trade on the sea. The third change is on the field of frontier. The word frontier mentioned here means the division unseen between China and other countries. When our social system transferred into a totally new one, what people eagerly need was a totally new thought to support this kind of transference.

No matter the mixture of the culture was caused by wars, by trades or by transferred social system, it did bring a wholly different literature concept for local literature.

3.4 Political condition

From Han Dynasty, the translation began in the field of religion, especially, in the Buddhist Scripture. During that age, most of the translators were Buddhists. Since the communication between China and the South-east Asian countries, even some Europeans, some interpreters came out. But, it"s still hard for them to establish an agency to take control of those translated professional works （Hu Ying,2017:233）. Till Ming Dynasty, an agency had been set up, called Si Yi Guan. Si Yi Guan not only undertook translation work, but also cultivated interpreters and translators so as to provide convenience for national affairs. What"s more, this kind of agencies offered experience to running a language school. As a result, the establishment of Si Yi Guan was of great significance. In addition to the function I mentioned above, it undertook the work of teaching and learning some other languages as well. In Qing Dynasty, the name of that agency changed and the whole institution was amalgamated with Hui Tong Guan into Hui Tong Si Yi Guan. Moreover, their main responsibilities are as follows: firstly, to receive foreign guests; secondly, to translate and interpret the files and meetings; thirdly, to offer accommodation to those foreign guests; fourthly, to arrange the trade between the countries around us.

Besides a great number of translation works in literary and philosophical fields, some translation agencies undertook the task to communicate between the local and the Western, such as the Lu Hong Temple in the Ming Dynasty, the Translation Museum of the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau in the Qing Dynasty and other translation agencies. All these changes and unifications were represented in the literature works.

3.5 Literary condition

As we all know, Ming and Qing Dynasties lasted for a extremely long time of about 6 centuries. Ming Dynasty began in the latter 13^th century and ended in the mid-seventeenth century, while Qing Dynasty began at the latter seventeenth century and ended at the early twentieth century. In this 600 years, the literature changed a lot since the social condition is different from time to time.

In China, there sprang large amounts of novels to show people various types of stories. The fundamental reasons for the emergence of novels in the Ming and Qing Dynasty are the economic prosperity in the city and the commercial development. The Ming and Qing dynasties were the last two dynasties of feudal society in China, and they were the most prosperous period in ancient Chinese literature history. From the late Han dynasty, there had been endless novels (including bizarre and anecdotes). Legendary novels had been changing since the Tang dynasty, and a wide range of vernacular fictions had been circulating since the Song Dynasty. In the Ming and Qing Dynasty, the literature especially the novels got more and more flourishing and fruitful.

In the history of Chinese literature, the novel finally entered the literary world in the Ming and Qing Dynasty. It displayed the majestic posture of ups and downs and the grandeur of an all-powerful spirit. The novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties condense the Chinese culture, which have a long history, and must truly describe the Chinese nation. Cultural tradition and cultural spirit, Ming and Qing novels appealed rare popular readers. We can analyze the Ming and Qing Dynasty from five aspects. Firstly, in terms of artistic structure, the Ming and Qing dynasties borrowed and developed the traditions of the ancient history narration system and formed a novel structure with national characteristics. For example, historical romance novels basically draw on the structural system of the chronicle history books. It describes the events and characters of a historical period. The saga, fiends, and satirical novels mainly use the structure of the historical chronicles to trace the experience of a certain hero. What"s more, in terms of language style, the novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties integrated traditional written languages such as classical Chinese, vernacular, and popular language of life in the society, forming a colorful language style. Then, in terms of expression methods, the novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasty were characterized by a combination of realism and fiction. While emphasizing realism, the novelists of the Ming and Qing Dynasties did not deny artistic fiction and even used fiction as a criterion for the creation of fiction. Fourthly, in the image-building, the novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties shaped a large number of life-like characters, including a large number of typical characters with distinctive personalities. In the method of image-building, they showed different national characteristics from the Western classic novels. Last but not the least, the novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties have deep cultural connotations. They not only express profound thinking on social history, but also provide us with a vivid symbol of the life course. They are also a distinctive display of Chinese traditional art style.

4. The Influence of History on Literary Translation

These different historiographical perspectives involve potentially different research aims, approaches, concepts, methods and scholarly interlocutors. A large number of exotic novels brought a fresh literary style to Chinese intellectuals and ordinary people seeking to learn the West. It brought a powerful shock and impact to the Chinese literary world when it was a the period of literary transformation. In the collision, blending and transmutation of Chinese and foreign literature, translated novels have a decisive external role in the modernization of Chinese novels.

According to the condition mentioned above, the translation on literary works in Ming and Qing Dynasty also gained a fresh style both in the selection of words and genre. In the past, the literary translation may preferred to transliteration. However, with time passing, our country were forced open by other countries military. The learners found that, by transliteration, the translated works could not send the whole information ,or even could totally not send it to our Chinese. So, they began to cater to the taste of Chinese. What’s more, in the past, the translation mostly used in the field of religion. With the development of history, the genre in those translation work turned to more diversified. They want the society to become a capitalist one.

4.1 Influence on the selection of words

Literary concept refers to the recognition, perception, and impression of literature, which is constantly revised and extended during the courses of reading, proliferation, and research of literature (Wang Benchao, 2010:232). The vernacular movement requires the popularization and popularization of literary language, and the hard and obscure classical language has become the biggest obstacle to the propagation of the novel. The translators used different methods to deal with the difficulties in the translation of novels. In the process, a large number of new words entered Chinese language, which greatly enriched and developed Chinese literary language.

4.2 Influence on genre

The changes in people"s fiction concepts were brought about by translated novels and the significance of translated novels in the history of Chinese literature. The advancement of the novel has deepened people"s understanding of this literary type, and at the same time, it also reveals the important role translated novels play in the modernization of Chinese literature as a whole and is one of the most important sources of modern Chinese literature.

Different from traditional subjects such as loyalists, wars, myths, and talented and beautiful women, translated novels cover these topics such as politics, science, detectives, and love. The popularization and popularization of themes has accelerated the process of modern Chinese literature, enriched the original themes and enriched the contents of the novel. Translation is fundamental to history and, in addition, the translational activity contributes to communicate historical narratives to other culture (Valdeon, 2011:241). This kind of change let the people at that time to have a more scientific and logical way to talk about a thing. It may also help them to easily find where the problem was and find a way to deal with it. That push the improvement of the history.

5. Conclusion

There exists an interaction between history and literary translation. As an important means of cross-cultural communication, translation has fully witnessed the success or failure of world history and its tortuous evolution. Its historical value is self-evident. However, history is constantly advancing. Many social factors involved in translation have changed with the development of the times. Therefore, translation must have some degree of historical limitations. In Ming and Qing Dynasty, the historical limitation is that people don’t need the literary translation works to fulfill their needs, which stops the development of the literary translation. The extremely weakness of science and technology urged them to attach more importance to scientific translation. Nevertheless, the slow-developed literary translation still provided people a new way to learn the world, to think about the question they have met. All that could push the development of the history.

Works Cited

Olohan Maeve: “History of science and history of translation: disciplinary commensurability?”. The Translator，2014.

Wang Benchao: “View of literary history and reconstruction of the history of modern and contemporary Chinese literature”. Frontier of Literary Studies in China, 2010 (4)：232-252.

胡 赢：《对中国翻译史“案本-求信-神似-化境”该脉络的再思》.湖南：湖南工业大学外国语学院学报，2017：233-234.

[Hu Ying: Rethinking the Context of the History of Chinese Translation: "Case-Belief-Spirituality-Transformation". Hunan: Journal of Hunan University of Foreign Studies ，2017:233-234.]

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