变译1Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau which patronizes the translation of Zuo. The analysis of
Zuo, will be contributed to the exploration of patron’s influence on the translation of Zuo,
and Chinese’ views on and comprehension of western learning in the period of
Westernization Movement
Zuo is one of the earliest works introducing western political and economic thoughts
in the late Qing Dynasty, which by chance conforms to Chinese social situation: finding
the roads to “self-improvement” and “prosperity”. Its popularity has been testified in an
all-round appreciation from officials and academic celebrities to common people ever
since it was published, especially after the Sin-Japanese War 1894 - 1895. Thus, the
study of Zuo will be conductive to a further knowledge of the relationship between social
background and translation activityThe source text of Zuo is one of the most popular books in English society, in which
there is no obscure theory but some simple interpretations of basic political and
economic thoughts of western society. The language of the source text is plain and easy
to understand, which highlights political economics and embodies the characteristics of
the discipline. However, the language and ideas of Zuo present a feature of localized
rendering. To be specific, Chinese ideology and poetics are adopted to demonstrate the
ideas of the original and considering Chinese readers’ comprehension, the ideas of the
original are interpreted or amplified, which leads to the weakening of the discipline of
political economics. But it is still believed as “the best book of introducing politics”
Liang Qichao 1144. Thus, this research attempts to explore the feature of the localized
rendering of Zuo and the introduction of the discipline of political economics in the late
Qing, which can illuminate the influence of Chinese local ideology and poetics on
translation activity and the spread of western political and economic thoughts in Chinese
society, especially before the Reform Movement 1.2 Literature Review
Up till now, researches on Zuo have been limited to the fields of history, politics,
and law, which concentrate on its key terms, ideas and stimulating influence in the late
Qing Dynasty. Apart from such peripheral studies, few researches have given this2translation a thorough examination in the light of western translation theories1 Researches on the translation of social, political and economic termsSome unimportant papers in translation circle discuss the rendering of some key
social, political and economic terms in Zuo, such as “society” rendered into “ 国家”,
“equality” into “ 平等”, “God” into “ 天、 上天”, “government”
into “ 国”, “liberalism” and
“freedom” into “ 自主”, “personal property” and “real property”
into “ 产业”. The
translation of “equality” and “God”, which Chinese are believed to accept easily, shows
that Fryer presents tactfully the liberalism of western political and economic theory Gao
Ruiquan 2009. In another paper, “ 国” replaces “government”, which
is thought to
weaken the concept of the political term Sun Qing 2009; whereas “liberty” and
“freedom” are rendered into “ 自主” in Zuo, which is believed to convey the idea of
liberalism Zhang Qing 2007. “Personal property” and “real property” are both rendered
into “ 产业” in Zuo, failing to indicate the difference between the two economic terms in
the original Zhang Lu and Zhao Xiaogeng 2009The above papers just touch upon Zuo to demonstrate the origin of some social,
political, and economic concepts spread in China. Thus, the studies are not concerned on
the translation issues in Zuo from the translation angle. In fact, the studies of the
rendering of social, political and economic terms in Zuo have reflected that there is a
preference for different translation strategies to render different kinds of terms, which
will be explained in the following chapters2 Researches on the thoughts of Zuo
Researches on Zuo in the widest sense include the monographs on reading list and
papers. However, their introductions of Zuo are so little that the characteristics of the
rendition are not discussed at allMonographs on reading list mainly include Western Reading List 《西学 书目表》
by Liang Qichao 1897, Normal Reading List of Chinese and Western Learning 《中西
学普通书目表》 by Huang Qingcheng 1901, Index of Chinese and Western Learning
《东西学书录》 by Xu Weize 1899 and so on. The brief introduction and analysis of
Zuo in works of this type present the basic status of its spread in the late Qing DynastyBesides, there are some papers discussing the western thoughts rendered in Zuo. It is
deemed that Chinese common sense is adopted to demonstrate the legitimacy of western3market economy and political system Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng 2001, which sheds
light on the translation method of localized rendering applied in Zuo. However, since the
paper studies the unique reasoning model in justification in Chinese culture and its
transformation under the impact of western learning, the feature of localized rendering of
Zuo is not summarized or explored deeply from the angle of translation
Wang Lin 2008 does a research on the main ideas of Zuo to prove that it is the best
《佐治刍言》本土化译述的研究
