A Study On Late Qing Missionaries' Remarks On Translation From Prefaces To Their Translated Works

Missionaries' translation activities began early in China,and in late Qing,relevant translated works were already rich both in number and in category,of which there are many views on translation given by those missionary translators,and translation remarks in the preface of their translated books are good cases in point.The exiting statistics and materials show that there have never been lack of researches on missionary translation works while relevant studies conducted on the basis of the prefaces in missionaries' translated books are few.Therefore,the author has discussed missionaries' remarks on translation in this thesis.From this new perspective,the author hopes it can add more historical materials and personal views to the studies on missionaries' translation.Under the guidance of the manipulation and rewriting theory and with the studying objects of the translation remarks selected from more than 20 prefaces in missionaries'translated books,the author has made a series of discussions on the missionaries'translation in which concrete translation remarks are quoted.First the author has analyzed the missionaries' translation motivations and purposes influenced by the main ideologies in late Qing.After the Sino-Japanese war in 1898,the Chinese intellectuals have begun to save their nation with cultural approaches,and they have hoped to improve people's cultural qualities and the social situations through the translation of western academic classic and the learning of advanced science and technology as well as cultural knowledge related.Therefore missionaries' translation activities conform to the main ideologies of late Qing society.Then the author continues to talk about the manipulation of poetics and missionary translators' four rewriting strategies,which contain adding auxiliary graphs and examples,omitting redundant and repeated contents,adapting different cultural expressions as well as selecting main and essential views.According to the definition of the poetics given by Lefevere,it mainly includes such two elements as the literary function and the literary style.Missionary translators' rewriting aims to make the translated fit the society of target language in literary function so as to overcome readers' foreignness and antipathy to the different culture;and it also aims to make the translated works fit the culture of target language in literary style so as to meet readers'expectations and reduce their reading obstacles.The author has also discussed the missionary translator' subjectivity in their translation activities,and the author has evaluated the religious thoughts and ethnocentrism reflected in missionary translators' translated works through analyses on their cultural identities and life experiences.Finally the authors has affirmed the value and importance of studies on translation remarks in the prefaces from a new perspective based on comments given by missionary translators on the quality and influence of their translated works.In the author's opinion,missionaries' remarks in the preface of their translated works are valuable and dispensable for the studies on translation related,because in prefaces there may contain many new historical materials which can be easily ignored by people.Through studying missionaries' remarks in the prefaces of their translated works under the guidance of the manipulation and rewriting theory,the author hopes this thesis can offer a potential studying perspective for the coming relevant studies and new applications and practices of western translation theories on translation activities.