Translated Abstract
AbstractChina is one of the oldest countries in the world with abundant history in many aspects. For thousands of years, China had been regarded as a miracle in the east and numerous people from countries far or near came to China for various purposes, which gave rise to the problem of communication between the people with different languages and finally developed into a systematic cultural phenomenon--translation. Thanks to the important status of ancient China, Chinese translation also owns a colorful history. Chinese scholars have agreed that there are three translation climaxes in Chinese history: ⑴ the translation of Buddhist scriptures from Han Dynasty to Song Dynasty. ⑵ the translation of Western science and technology from late Ming dynasty to early Qing Dynasty. ⑶ the translation of Western philosophy and literature from the Opium War (1840-1842) to the May 4th Movement. These three translation climaxes marked three stages in Chinese history and some books and papers have been published to describe the situation. However, a truth is that most of the books and papers dealing with this field just focus on the facial phenomena(there are just 6 papers published on this subject in CNKI from 1994 till now, and the discussion barely touches the essence there are 17 books published on this subject that I have found in Chinese National Library, and most of them just state the history without studying the beneath motivations), leaving a blank gap on the deep reasons that motivate the three translation climaxes. Therefore, we have great knowledge on what the three translation climaxes look like but little on why. Since we cannot truly understand anything without digging into the deep reasons, this thesis aims to explore the deep motivations to Chinese translation phenomena with an ambition to bridge this glaring gap. With consideration that society is an organic subject that is influenced by many aspects, this thesis approaches this problem from different aspects guided mainly by two methods, namely, dialectics (materialistic view of history) and the combination of micro-history and macro-history. After systematic analysis, a conclusion about the motivations to the three translation climaxes are drawn as: political motivation to the translation of Buddhist scriptures from Han Dynasty to Song Dynasty, economical motivation to the translation of Western science and technology from late Ming dynasty to early Qing Dynasty, and ideological motivation to the translation of Western philosophy and literature from the Opium War. These three motivations may shed light on the deep reasons why the three translations climaxes occurred at that specific period of time and how they appeared. Besides, a comparative study of the three motivations can tell us the direction of Chinese translation, which can throw some light on the future translation activities and greatly benefit the translation study in China.
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