A Study Of The Works On Steam Engines Translated By The Kiangnan Arsenal In The Late Qing Period

This paper makes a study on four works on steam engines translated by the Kiangnan Arsenal—Qi Ji Fa Ren, Qi Ji Bi Yi, Qi Ji Xin Zhi, Bing Chuan Qi Ji, and the Vocabulary of Terms Relating to the Steam Engine, which was edited for the standardization of terminology translation. It mainly discusses and resolves the following issues:Firstly, it researches the original versions and authors of these four works, and finds that the original authors were all important experts at steam engines in England at that time, and their works were reprinted again and again and had a great influence in Europe. In other words, the works on steam engines the Kiangnan Arsenal selected had a very high quality. The original versions were published no more than ten years before the publication of their Chinese tanslations. So they were quite up-to-date works.Secondly, it compares the translated versions with other works on steam engines introduced into China by the same period, and points out that the knowledge these four works was the most professional, the most systematic, the most detailed and the most advanced, and occupies an important position in the early spread of steam engine technology in China.Thirdly, it analyses the translating features of the four works, points out that the works are not direct translations but largely re-interpretations which are characteristic of the typical way of the Chinese translation of foreign books of the time, i.e. dictated by missionaries from Europe or America on the basis of their understanding and penned and polished by Chinese scholars with good style of Chinese. While this working model makes the translation basically precise and succinct, it also ignores some details which may achieve a full spread of knowledge.Fourthly, it analyses the feature of the translation of technical terminology in these four works and the Vocabulary of Terms Relating to the Steam Engine, and points out the translating rules of professional terms created by the translator followed in the translation, and the new terms express the meaning exactly in essence.Finally, it traces the dissemination and influence of these translated works, and finds that they were incorporated into several important series popular among Chinese intelligentsia in the late Qing period. But these works had little effects on the manufactures of steam engines and the professional training in steam engine.