The Translation And Diffusion Of Babbit's New Humanism In China

At the beginning of the 20 th century,westerners found that material civilization can't solve their spiritual emptiness and moral degeneration,the classical humanism boomed in the west.Irving Babbitt as one of the leading figures who had greater impact deeply affected a number of Chinese students studying in the United states.This group of students by Wu Mi,Mei Guangdi and Hu Xiansu as the representatives,not only identified the thought of Babbitt,but also introduced it into China as the essence of western culture.In order to spread the thought of Babbitt,they gathered a group of like-minded intellectuals and set up The Critics magazine after returning.They translated a large number of articles by Babbitt and wrote many articles about the new humanism.At that time,China had just experienced the great social change from feudal autocracy to democratic republic,the political,economic and cultural industries have a thousand things wait to be done.Where is the future of China was a question for all the people in China.At such a point,the Critical Review School introduced the thought of Babbitt to China which had already expressed their conservative attitude for the future development of China and their attitude was more evident in the debate with The New Culture School.So at the beginning,the translation has a strong purpose with the Critical Review School's idea.This paper,based on Babbitt's new humanism theory,taking the Critical Review School as the main line,describes the magazine's history,personnel rheology and the translations of Babbitt's thought,summarizes the translation characteristics of the Critical Review School and points out the sinicized conversion in translation.This is not only because of the semantic inequivalence in different cultural context,but also because of the interpretation of The Critical Review School.This leads to the sinicization of Babbitt's thought at the beginning and became the weapons in the debate.Because of The Critical Review School tried to answer the problem of the future development of China,the author put it into the historical background at the beginning of the era,contrasts the similarities and differences between the Critical Review School and other conservative schools and analyzes the different cultural ideas of radicalism and conservatism at the time.Although the Critical Review School has a big fail in the debate,the author still objectively analyzed Babbitt's thought's influence on Chinese philosophy,literature,history and education.Followed by the spread of Liang Shiqiu in Taiwan,scholars rethought The Critical Review School on 80 s,Babbitt's thought returned to the horizon.The author summarized its diffusion and had a profound thinking about the relationship between Babbitt and The Critical Review School.Why did The Critical Review School choose Babbitt in numerous western thinkers? What had they changed about Babbitt's thought and why not succeed in China.Is it valuable? These are the questions that this paper tries to answer.