Source of this article: Translation History Research
On December 21, 2006, at the Second New Shoots symposium on Chinese Translation Studies, I nervously finished my article "Translation, Gender and Nationality: Catherine II in the Late Qing Dynasty". Although I have long known that there are many problems in the paper, and I am also mentally prepared to listen carefully to the opinions of experts, when the judges and teachers ruthlessly pointed out a series of problems such as my research history is not detailed, the viewpoint is not novel, the argument is insufficient, the logic is not rigorous, and the expression is not clear, my first reaction is still so frustrated, I feel that the efforts of the Doctoral Study for more than a year seem to be in vain. Eight years later, in order to prepare the paper for the symposium "Translators in the History of Translation" sponsored by the Taiwan Translation Studies Association, I refocused the case of Catherine and rewrote the paper under the title of "When Confucian Virtue Theory Meets Utilitarianism: The Image of Catherine the Great in the Late Qing Dynasty.". In the process of writing, looking back at the research of that year, it is easy to find that at that time, I basically did not know what academic research was; or rather, I understood some methods and the standards of excellent academic research, but I was far from being able to implement it.
Proceedings of the 2nd Chinese New Shoots symposium on Translation Studies
I am the first doctoral student recruited by Teacher Wang Hongzhi in Fudan. The previous background of studying English majors did not help academic research except that I could read English literature later. The knowledge structure is unreasonable, the research methods are basically not understood, and the growth environment and personal experience are limited, resulting in a narrow field of vision, a single and one-sided view of personnel, all of which led to my study in Fudan, all of which had to start from scratch. After me, the teacher did not admit students in Fudan for many years, and I always felt that I had left a shadow on the teacher. Fortunately, fortunately, the teacher who was gentle and tolerant, responsible, and full of mission did not give up on me. I also honestly followed the requirements of the teacher and worked hard step by step.
01 Reasonable knowledge structure
In the first semester of my phD, I based on the advice of my teacher and combined with my own interests, I established the topic of my doctoral dissertation to study the image of Western female masters introduced to China in the late Qing Dynasty, and Catherine was one of the cases. The first problem I encountered was that my understanding of the history of the late Qing Dynasty at that time was still at the level of middle school textbooks, and I needed to read a lot of professional research books related to the late Qing Dynasty.
It mainly contains three aspects, the first of course, is the history of the late Qing Dynasty. The study of any issue in the late Qing Dynasty, whether women's history or education history; whether the period is in the second half of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century, requires a holistic and comprehensive understanding of the politics, economy, culture, ideology, military, etc. of the late Qing Dynasty. The classification of disciplines is artificially set, but historical development is interlocked, involving the whole body, and never follows the established artificial standards. By confining oneself to a single area and not considering anything else, the conclusions reached are biased. In addition, the study of translation history itself has a strong interdisciplinarity, which also requires researchers to have a comprehensive grasp of various fields. The motivation of the late Qing translators to translate catherine's character involved all aspects of late Qing politics, diplomacy, thought, culture, education, and the women's movement. Without holistic observation, it is difficult to reveal the true context of the late Qing intellectuals' translation and introduction of Catherine.
Second, Western learning was introduced to China on a large scale in the late Qing Dynasty, and to understand the late Qing Dynasty, it is necessary to be familiar with Western history and culture. By the beginning of the 20th century, Western learning had been transmitted mainly to China through Japan, so the development of Japan since the Meiji Restoration should also be mastered. When late Qing translators translated the history and biography of Catherine, most of them used Meiji Japanese writings (translations) as the original. Although meiji intellectuals differed in their specific interpretations of Catherine's exemplary significance, most of them were influenced by the readings compiled by the Meiji Period, hoping to use Catherine's deeds to promote Meiji women to improve their character and cultivate a spirit of self-reliance. But this purpose changed in the late Qing Dynasty. If we do not know the image of Catherine in Meiji Japan and the historical and cultural context behind it, it is difficult to understand the rewriting and differences in positions and attitudes of late Qing translators in the translation process.
Catherine the Great
（Catherine the Great，1729-1796）
Third, if the above two aspects are a horizontal understanding of the current situation of the late Qing Dynasty, then the study of ancient Chinese thought and culture is a longitudinal consideration of the history of the late Qing Dynasty. Without understanding ancient China, only intercepting this period of history of the late Qing Dynasty to study, the final understanding is bound to be superficial. Judging from the text, the late Qing translator was full of contradictions when faced with a woman like Catherine, whose strengths and weaknesses were prominent. They loved and hated Catherine and were incomparably entangled. In the end, although catherine won as a model, the helplessness, frustration or pretend not to care about Catherine's shortcomings in the late Qing Dynasty would inevitably be superficial if it were not placed in the context of the ancient reader's pursuit of virtue.
In addition to the above knowledge, which is closely related to the research content, the study of critical thinking, logic, and thesis writing methods is also indispensable. Academic research is about innovation, and in the case of translation history research, innovation can be the discovery of new materials or the presentation of new ideas. If you want to come up with new ideas, you must first have the ability to think critically, and be careful to ask questions while carefully seeking verification. As for logic, it can make our thinking process more standardized and rigorous, help us to make more rigorous and convincing reasoning and arguments when analyzing historical materials, or in the gaps in historical materials; and express our views more accurately and clearly when writing papers. In addition, the arrangement of the structure of the dissertation, the transition between paragraphs, the articulation between sentences, and the standardized expression of one word must also be obtained through special study and practice.
02 Collection of historical materials
Historical materials are the life of historical research, and the collection of historical materials is an indispensable job for researchers. Specific to the topic of the image of Western female masters introduced to China in the late Qing Dynasty, the common core materials are various biographies of female masters, including monographs and newspaper articles. The former such as "World Ten Female Masters", "World Twelve Female Masters", "Women's New Reader", "Biography of Foreign Women" and so on. Because of her special imperial status, Catherine was also included in the male-dominated "Reprint of the World Haojie Tan" and so on. As for the biography of the female master published in the press, it is relatively difficult to find. In the era of my reading, the full-text database of periodicals in the late Qing Dynasty had not yet been established, and the information contained in millions of books in China and the United States was still very limited, and to find newspaper and periodical literature, I could only go to the library to read them one by one. To this day, you can still recall the complicated feelings of walking on the road from Fudan to Shangtu, there are expectations, there are tired and depressed, there are also ecstatic, you can also feel the film materials to see vomit, and the staff of the above picture to fight wits, and with new and old friends huddled in the underground restaurant to chat about the paper. In addition to the biography of The Female Jie, Catherine's case also requires access to a large number of historical works, such as the "History of All Nations" popular among intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty, as well as various historical translations, such as "The Romance of All Nations", "Russian History Translation", "Russian History", "Recent History of Russia" and so on.
"The World's Ten Women", "Biography of Foreign Women"
In general, the above two types of materials can basically be easily found through the search system of the above figures, national maps, and the compilation of modern periodicals, but how other late Qing dynasty readers view Catherine's materials is lacking in ready-made data compilations or databases that can be used. Reading the show can indeed help some of it, but it is of limited use. On the one hand, it is because the literature is limited, on the other hand, the late Qing translation name is not uniform, and it is far from today's translation name, which is difficult to retrieve. Therefore, there is only "the poor and the blue fall of the yellow spring". Because he did not know where the information would appear, and because he was afraid that his judgment would be biased, he could only do his best to look at the main newspapers and periodicals of the time page by page. From advertisements to images, from literary creations, letters from readers to the introduction of the bibliography on the back cover, as far as possible, do not miss. These materials are not the most central material for the study of Catherine or other Western female masters, but they are also very important. They constitute a small historical context in which late Qing intellectuals created the figure of Catherine. Only by placing Catherine in biographical and historical works in this context can it be possible to restore the real state of mind, attitude and position of the late Qing translators. However, although the idea is beautiful, it is extremely difficult to implement. Often I read the information all day, but what I want is "not seen in two places". However, once a valuable historical material is found, it can also be excited to talk about it every time, hate and cannot run to tell it.
In addition to finding translations, the study of translation history also has to look up the original text. Researchers familiar with the history of the late Qing Dynasty know that it is very common for late Qing dynasty translation works not to sign the name of the translator or to sign the pen name. As for the original author's name and the original book title, in most cases, it is very good to have a Chinese transliteration name, and the original name in foreign languages is basically not extravagant. My doctoral dissertation was later decided to focus on the book "Ten Women of the World". For a long time, the academic community did not know who the translator of the book was or where it came from. At that time, I first judged that the approximate time of the book "Ten Female Masters of the World" was early 1903 based on the translator's preface, and then I found all the biographies of Western female masters translated and written by Meiji intellectuals before 1903 from the National Diet Library of Japan and checked them one by one. Start with a table of contents comparison. "The Ten Female Masters of the World" tells the story of ten Western female masters, and generally speaking, translators are more likely to choose the biographies of these ten female masters from a certain original book, rather than selecting materials from multiple original works. Therefore, The Japanese translations that do not include these ten female masters are largely disregarded. In addition, combined with the existing research results in the academic circles, that is, Liang Qichao translated the "Biography of Mrs. Roland" based on Defu Luhua's "World Ancient and Modern Famous Women's Book". In view of Liang Qichao's important influence in the intellectual circles of the late Qing Dynasty during this period, and the book "Ten Women of the World" strives to imitate Liang Qichao's style of "often carrying feelings in the pen", it is finally determined that most of the book is translated from the "World Ancient and Modern Famous Women's Book".
The book shadow of "The World's Ancient and Modern Famous Women's Book"
Specific to Catherine's case, it also went through a difficult and interesting process. Xu Jingluo's translation of the Russian History Series was published by the Puzzle Book Club in 1888. No information is provided in the Russian History Translation of the original book. After a long period of searching, I finally got a clue in the research of Professor Zou Zhenhuan, which is based on the "Brief Readings of Literature and Sciences of Russian History" in the British "Bohn's Classical Reading Series", and translated with reference to other works. Since Bohn is British, I followed my habitual thinking and searched for information about Bohn in Google, but there was no result. Until one day, I had a sudden idea to try my luck at the National Diet Library. As a result, happiness came unexpectedly. Successfully found Bohn's full name Henry George Bohn, and found on Google that he established Bohn's libraries, in which Bowen's Standard Library found the only russian history The History of Russia, and finally went to the Internet Archive to download the book, text comparison, determined that the original "Russian History Translation" was Walter (Walter The History of Russia by Keating Kelly.
03 Analysis of historical data
Emphasizing the importance of historical materials and research is not the same as agreeing with the unrestrained stacking and listing of historical materials. Instead, we need to sort, summarize, and analyze the data to finally form our own understanding of history. Therefore, the interpretation of historical materials is also the basic skill of historical researchers. Researchers should be able to read out information that is not easy for ordinary readers to find from historical materials, and fully realize the value of historical materials. Specifically, grasp the core words and phrases to figure out what the historical data says, does, and advocates; whether it supports or opposes the objective of the question, whether it gives strong evidence or explanation, and so on. Of course, in this process, we must always adhere to the theory from history, and avoid preconceptions, out-of-context, unfounded subjective assumptions and over-interpretation.
In addition, postmodern historical theory also provides us with new research perspectives. It is understandable that postmodern historiography has its negative side, it rarely dwells on the judgment of the authenticity of historical materials, suspends the truth of history, or dissolves the historical truth, thinks that everything is just a narrative, and goes to the other extreme. But its rational side is still worth learning. Teacher Ge Zhaoguang once said that postmodern historiography has two major contributions, one is to see all kinds of fiction, narrative, obscuration and cover-up in history; the other is to explore the mood of the fictionalizers and the real ideas, value orientations, and ideas of choosing these events. If this idea is borrowed into the field of translation history research, it is to explore whether the translator has rewritten it in the translation process and why it is rewritten under the premise of historical data support.
Catherine's image in the West, Meiji Japan, and the image created by the intellectuals of the late Qing Dynasty are often at odds. Take, for example, Su Ben cho's translation of Recent History of Russia. The book is based on the French work Oftoire de la Russie by Alfred Rambaud (1842-1905): depuis les origines jusqu'à l'année 1877. In the original book, the author sees Catherine's usurpation of the throne as révolution. The term "revolution" has a more complex meaning during the French Revolution, which is embodied in the synthesis of various pre-revolutionary "revolutionary" discourses. At that time, the French believed that the "revolution" could promote human progress, but also believed that the "revolution" was full of storms and dangers. Rimbaud's Catherine's "revolution" presents precisely this complexity. However, su Benquan's translation of révolution as "turmoil" is closely related to the understanding of "revolution" in the late Qing Dynasty. In the same way, we can also analyze the image of Catherine created by the intellectuals of the late Qing Dynasty, which is actually a combination of multiple contradictions. "Usurping the throne by the king" also enjoys the reputation of "Russia's order to break through"; the aggression is weak and small, but it has been given the image of a political strongman and a revolutionary; "the insider is not cultivated", "the female morality is deficient", but it is also a model for guiding the action of women in the late Qingxin.
Su Ben cho's translation of the Recent History of Russia and its originals
However, if we only stay at the above level of describing the phenomenon and analyzing the causes of the phenomenon, the research is not deep enough. At this point, we need to ask further questions about what deeper problems these conflicts illustrate? How is it related to the study of intellectual history? In general, we can divide these images of Catherine into two categories, one is the moral level, and the other is the merit level. Within the two, especially the former, there are often positive and negative opinions. Behind it is the conflict between the traditional Confucian theory of virtue and utilitarianism, which is mainly formed by the combination of Confucian tradition and social Darwinism. As a result, the deep reasons for the difference in catherine's image in the late Qing Dynasty, the ambivalence and value orientation of the late Qing translators can basically be presented. If the material allows, it is also possible to continue to explore how these different images of Catherine influenced the women's movement at that time.
04 The growth of people
Academic research ability to improve, in addition to standardized academic training, human growth is also very important. History is the object of study of people, if the understanding of the complexity of human nature and world affairs is not enough, and the perspective of looking at problems is single and one-sided, it is difficult to get close to the hearts of historical figures and understand them sympathetically. In July 2010, my daughter was born. As a new mother, I was full of joy, but the trivial life that followed day after day made me have no time to read books, write papers, and for a long time I did not dare to contact the teacher. When I finally plucked up the courage to write to the teacher and feel guilty for abandoning my studies, the teacher replied to me that the experience of being a mother was also growing. I remember when I saw the teacher's reply, I thought to myself, the teacher comforted me. Until one day, when I was walking on the road in a trance, I suddenly remembered Cai Yuanpei's 1919 commendation of Zhao Sheng's sister Zhao Fen, who praised the lady Zhao Fen for "being a revolutionary party when she goes out, and a good wife and a good mother." When writing my doctoral dissertation, I only used this material to illustrate the ideal female image in the minds of male intellectuals at that time, but at that moment, I began to truly appreciate the difficult situation of intellectual women in modern China. Under the premise of no institutional guarantees and social changes, men call on women to respond to new ideas such as salvation, enlightenment, and patriotism, while still requiring women to perform traditional duties, which is really unfair to women. The trivial daily life here inspires my understanding of people, things, and the past, which also reflects the historian Bullock's statement: "The cultivation of a sense of history is not always limited to history itself, and today's knowledge and real life often help people understand history more directly in a certain way." ”
Looking back now, it was those anxious and trivial days that made me grow and improve rapidly in terms of psychology and cognition. If what I learned during my studies was to understand women in the late Qing Dynasty theoretically and logically, then during that period of time, I began to learn to cross time and space, and to know them as living beings in real life without violating historical facts. It was also in those two or three years that I completed the revision of my doctoral dissertation. Get up at 2 a.m. every day and race against the clock to complete the tasks planned for the day. During the day, I also use all the fragmented time to conceive the paper. The busy life forced me to learn what my teacher had taught me but never did, which was to use the time spent walking on the road, ten minutes between classes, sitting in the car, and doing housework. It is no longer required to have at least an hour or two of the entire block to write a paper, and it is not required to be absolutely quiet and not disturbed. So I insisted and revised my doctoral dissertation three times. If it is not urged by the editor, it may be possible to continue to modify. Because after two or three years, I look at my doctoral dissertation, there is no legend that the more you look at it, the more cute it is, on the contrary, I feel that there are still too many places that need to be improved. In 2013, the monograph "Constructed Western Female Masters: The World's Ten Female Masters in the Late Qing Dynasty" was finally published. The overall framework structure is roughly the same as that of the doctoral dissertation, but the wording, the internal structure of the chapters and the historical materials have been greatly modified and improved. After the monograph was published, I re-studied the Western women such as Charlotte Corday and Florence Nightingale involved in the book, and wrote articles about my new understanding of them. Catherine's research was also one of them, which was later published in the seventeenth volume of the Journal of Translation Studies, a journal of the Taiwan Translation Studies Society.
Tang Xinyu
"Constructed Western Female Masters: The World's Ten Female Masters in the Late Qing Dynasty"
Sichuan University Publishing Co., Ltd., 2013
In recent years, I have begun to focus on some translators who are in a "marginal" position in the current translation history writing, such as Chen Shoupeng, Zhang Kunde, Zeng Guangquan, and so on. Although their true status in the late Qing Dynasty was not marginal, they still belonged to the intellectual elite, but for various reasons, they were rarely known today's people. Unlike Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and others, who were determined to open up people's wisdom and save the peril with translation from the beginning, they did not always hold such a pure and noble purpose of translation. Their motivation for choosing to translate is sometimes also for salvation and enlightenment, but more often, it is either to support their families, or to be required by the situation, or to be coincidental, or to be responsible. But we cannot assume that their place in the history of translation can be ignored. Their contributions to modern Western translation are an important part of the study of the history of translation in the late Qing Dynasty. The complexity and diversity they show can also provide us with excellent material for us to understand the real situation and living conditions of intellectuals in the transitional era.
In addition to translator research, the issue of language in the process of Chongqing's modernization is another topic of concern to me. On the whole, the modernization process of Chongqing is roughly the same as that traveled by port cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou. However, it should not be overlooked that due to the different regions in which they were located, the depth and degree of openness of western learning in the provinces of the late Qing Dynasty were different, and the problems encountered were not the same. Chongqing, an important town in the southwest, was opened as a commercial port in 1891. At that time, Chongqing's society was full of contradictions, and the intellectual circles were closed and conservative. When people have to face the all-round impact of Western studies and the intervention of Westerners in actual political, economic, cultural and social life, the language problem becomes the primary problem. For example, after the establishment of Chongqing Customs, the real power was monopolized by foreigners, and there were very few Chinese who could use English proficiently at that time, so translation became a necessary daily work. In addition, in the second half of the 19th century, large-scale teaching cases broke out in the Chongqing area, becoming one of the areas where late Qing religious cases were frequent. The current research mainly analyzes the causes of conflict between the two sides from the political, social, religious and other aspects, while ignoring the contradictions caused by language barriers. I hope that by examining the history of Chongqing's politics, culture, diplomacy, education and other fields since modern times, I hope to explore the important role played by language and translation issues in promoting the modernization of modern Chongqing.
Biography
Author's close-up
Tang Xinyu, Ph.D. of Chinese Department of Fudan University, teacher of School of Foreign Languages, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, research direction is the history of translation and women since the late Qing Dynasty. He has published more than ten papers, presided over two provincial and ministerial projects, and published a monograph "Constructed Western Female Masters: "The World's Ten Female Masters" in the Late Qing Dynasty.