A Study Of The Translation Of International Law In The Late Qing Dynasty

Before the Opium War,the late Qing government believed that China was the center of East Asia,even the center of the world,and other nations were barbarians.Therefore,it had adopted the “closed-door” policy,and refused to communicate with the outside world.At that time,the Empire of the Qing Dynasty had become a frog in a well with no idea of the world's trends.This situation continued until the outbreak of the first Opium War in 1840.Western powers opened China's door with their firm ships and advanced artillery,and the late Qing government had to abandon the “closed-door” policy and open its door to the world.After the Opium War,China was forced to sign a series of unequal treaties with Western countries,which encroached on many rights and interests of China.The late Qing government and some insightful people realized that in order to negotiate with Western powers on an equal basis,the first thing they needed to do was to understand Western laws.Then the trend of the translation of Western law had been raised in the late Qing Dynasty.One of the first Western legal works introduced to China is international law.In order to fight against the Western powers,the rulers of the late Qing Dynasty also urgently needed to introduce international law.So the late Qing government and the common people began to translate international law on a large scale.This paper adopts literature research methods,historical research methods and interdisciplinary research methods to study the translation history of international law in the late Qing Dynasty.Through the review and research of historical materials,this paper sorts out the main representatives of international law translation in the late Qing Dynasty,their translation works and the major translation methods,and finally analyzes the influences of the translation of international law on China's diplomacy,education,politics and translation history through case study.Major findings are listed below:(1)The main representatives of the introduction and translation of international law in the late Qing Dynasty are Lin Zexu who is the first person to see the world in modern China,the American missionaries W.A.P.Martin and John Fryer,and the students studying in Japan.They played an important role in the translation of international law in the late Qing Dynasty.Among them,the "Wan Guo Gong Fa" translated by W.A.P.Martin is the first complete practice of legal translation in modern China,and has an irreplaceable important position in the history of modern Chinese legal translation.In addition,these missionaries mostly adopted the translation methods of addition and omission in their translated international works.(2)The translation of international law had a great impact on China at that time,with both positive influences and negative influences.It helped the late Qing government solve many diplomatic problems,brought advanced Western political,legal and educational ideas to the backward China and trained a large number of local legal translators.The translation of international law in the late Qing Dynasty also opened up a new field of modern Chinese translation and created a large number of new legal terms for China's legal system.What's more,it also brought new knowledge system and values to modern China,and made Chinese people aware of the ideas of “democracy,republic and rule of law”,which brought new hope to feudal China at that time.However,at that time,the translation of international law really protected the interests of Western powers in many cases.It was only a tool used by Western powers to control the late Qing government.The purpose of this paper is to make up for the lack of previous studies in the field of international law.At the same time,this paper has a certain reference value for the study of the history of the development of modern Chinese law and the history of legal translation.