Source: Foreign Language and Foreign Language Teaching, Issue 4, 2018
Transferred from: Studies in the History of Translation
Authors: Dr. Yang Jing, Center for Foreign Language Teaching, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine
When we talk about translation, we generally involve two languages, so the contrast between two languages in translation studies is indispensable. The easiest way to do this is to compare the original with the translation to find the similarities and differences. This method, though old-fashioned, is the only way to discover the relationship between the source and the translation in an age when machines are still unable to completely replace the human mind. The book of the recent age is easier to deal with.,Because it's easy to obtain.。 If we're lucky, we'll even be able to meet and talk directly with the author of the original and translation, but it's not so simple for older books. Needless to say, the late Qing Dynasty more than 100 years ago is enough for us to toss, and these books with a sense of age are particularly important for the study of translation history, but they are not easy to obtain. In other words, many times we can easily get a translation without knowing anything about it. If the translator did not give an exact explanation at the time, where would we find such a base? In this case, there is no way to start the above comparison. Because of this,Many researchers in the academic community may be forced by the situation.,Find a book to use as a base.,Of course, the "casual" mentioned here is also likely to be the book they mistakenly think they used is the book used in the historical environment at that time. If you are sure to do a good job in research, you must find a way to find out the original text, especially if the book is closely related to the translator's own motivation for translation. Here's an example.
△图1：李提摩太（Timothy Richard, 1845–1919）
Everyone should be familiar with Timothy Lee, a British Baptist missionary who was quite active in the political arena of the late Qing Dynasty in China, and his translations are rich. During his 45 years of missionary work in China, he also devoted himself to the study of Chinese Buddhism and successively translated into English the "Mahayana Theory of Belief", "The Three Sutras of the Lotus Sutra" (hereinafter referred to as the "Lotus Sutra"), "Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra" and "Selected Buddhist Texts" and other Buddhist texts. However, it is interesting to note that the current academic research topic is to mistakenly believe that the original is the Kumarosh Han translation (hereinafter referred to as "Shiben"), and many people compare it with his translation by a random publisher. We can imagine whether the study of comparing a translation with an erroneous manuscript, either glorifying Timothy Lee or criticizing him for nothing, is it really convincing? In fact, as long as we dig a little more and pay more attention to the translator's side text, this manuscript can still be found, but it takes a little effort.
△ Figures 2 and 3: Cover page of the Lotus Sutra: Exegetical Translation (1) and (2)
Timothy Lee mentioned the Lotus Sutra several times in his memoirs in China, and his English translation is included in The New Testament of Higher Buddhism.
- This we now find in an edition translated into Japanese by K. S. Fukagawa and published by the Buddhist Nichiren sect in A.D. 1904, in ten volumes. Eight of which contain the Lotus Gospel (I call it Gospel because of its wonderful similarity to the Christian Gospels), and two other volumes are what might be called the Prologue and Epilogue to it respectively.
- Besides the Japanese text, there is in it, in parallel columns, on the top of the page, a Chinese synopsis of the Scripture which leaves out the incredible Indian embellishments, giving only the essence of the teaching.
- This synopsis is not new by a Chinaman or a Japanese, but consists of extracts made from the original Chinese translation of Kumaragiva, so as to give the essence of this Scripture with its Prologue and Epilogue.
- This synopsis or essence is what I now translate. It has never been translated into any European language before. (Richard, 1910: 129)
The information in (1) above is obviously not clear, and no further information has been provided about the translator of K.S. Fukagawa. But at least it is certain that he is related to Japan, and since Japanese Buddhism was transmitted from China, it is possible that this person is also related to China. Also, I can be sure that the "kawa" in this string of kana is the pronunciation of the kanji "chuan". So, I began to search the list of all scholars in Japan and China who studied Buddhist scriptures, and as long as they contained the word "chuan", I would not let go of them, and I would carefully read all his writings. However, the work is relatively easy, because the work must be related to the "Lotus Flower". Finally, with the help of many friends, I found out that this person was called "Fukagawa Kan", one of the representatives of the Nichiren sect in Japan, and the author of "The Lotus Sutra: A Translation of the Teachings" (1905), "The Lotus Sutra Essentials" (1903), and "The Essentials of the Myoho-renge-kyo Sutra" (1909), all of which were published by Yoshida Zenzo Shoney. I found that the Lotus Sutra: Exegetical Translations of the Lotus Sutra presents a very consistent appearance with Lee's description above. Figures 2 to 7 interspersed in this article are part of the original text.
△ Figure 4: The preface page of the Lotus Sutra: Exegesis Translation
Figures 2 and 3 are the covers of the book. Figure 4 shows the "Preface to the New Ten Volumes of the Lotus Sutra Interpretation," which Timothy Lee said that this translation was published in ten volumes. Fig. 5 "Nichiren Shinsho" is "published by the Buddhist Nichiren sect" as Lee said. The date of publication mentioned in Figure 6 is "Meiji 38", which is 1905 according to the Japanese year conversion system (1867 plus the year 38 shown). Figure 7 shows the exact style of the translation, with vertical Japanese at the bottom and Timothy Lee's synopsis at the top. Lee recalls meeting Mrs. Gordon during his study of Buddhism in Japan. E. A. Gordon) and received a Japanese version of the Lotus Sutra, which included a summary of the Chinese scriptures of the Sutra. It was when Lee read this summary that he was struck by the life, light, and love expressed in the scriptures, because it is very similar to the content of the Bible-John Gospel. Later, in the summer of the same year, Lee began translating the scripture into English, and Mrs. Gordon added many commentaries to the translation. Therefore, I finally determined that the Japanese version of the Lotus Sutra obtained by Timothy Lee was the Lotus Sutra: A Translation of the Lotus Sutra by Fukagawa Observation. This book is currently available at the National Diet Library of Japan, and a photocopy copy is posted on the corresponding website. There is no table of contents for the whole book, and the main text of the whole book is divided into eight volumes, that is, the first and second articles are the first volume, the third and fourth articles are the second volume, the fifth to seventh articles are the third volume, the eighth to eleven products are the fourth volume, the twelfth to fifteenth articles are the fifth volume, the sixteenth to nineteenth articles are the sixth volume, the twenty-twenty-fourth to twenty-fourth articles are the seventh volume, and the twenty-fifth to twenty-eighth articles are the eighth volume. These eight volumes are preceded by the "Immeasurable Righteousness Sutra", and then there is the "Buddha Says the Sutra of the Bodhisattva's Practice". Of the eight volumes, the first three are the same as the Shiben (note, Shiben has a total of 7 volumes), but are different from the fourth volume onwards. Comparing the summary with Shiben, it is found that the former is completely a random copy of Shiben, and the text is extremely incoherent. Second, the summary should be reversed or repeated in multiple places. Thirdly, the summary is to arbitrarily split the sentence into four characters, and always end with a full stop, without considering the coherence of the text. Finally, the summary also adds content that is not found in Shibben. Although the summary contains both the text of the text and its verses, it is not the "main translation of the verses" as most scholars in the current academic circles say, but it is not the essence of the Lotus Sutra as described by Lee. If the number of words per product and the number of words per product of the summary are comprehensively counted (excluding spaces, characters, punctuation and the number of words of the title of each product, only the Chinese characters of the main text are counted), the number of words in the book is 69321, while the summary book is only 8819, and the percentage is less than 13%. In short, the principle of excerpts from the summary is not completely consistent with the length of the text, and it shows arbitrariness.
△ Figures 5 and 6: Lotus Sutra: Exegetical Translation Pages (1) and (2)
Once the original has been found, the next step is to try to construct its relationship with Timothy Lee. In fact, Lee thinks highly of the sutra itself, and if he goes by his own introduction, there have been several translations of the Lotus Sutra before him, such as the French translation by Eugène Burnouf (1801–1852) and the English translation by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern (1833–1917) (from Sanskrit), why did he retranslate it himself? , and among them is the English translation of Cohen. Lee was critical of this translation, believing that it did not convey the essence of the text at all. On this point, he himself has a very clear explanation:
"Most of the Buddhist texts, i.e., the Sutras of the Fang and Other Scriptures, written in Sanskrit, are later forms of the original scriptures. They were amplified and diffuse, and were introduced to China by Zhu Fahu between 266–317 CE. The number of these works is staggering (utterly incredible) and the retention of a very strong Indian colouring is evident from Cohen's English translation. As a result, today's readers are in dire need of a more essence version that will serve as spiritual food for millions of people. ”（Richard，1910: 128–129）
The above quotation indicates two points: first, Li believes that the Sanskrit Sutra has become more and more lengthy over time, and when Zhu Fahu translated these voluminous texts into Chinese, these Indian verbose features can be seen in the comparison with the Cohen translation. Therefore, Lee thinks that Cohen's translation is too "Indian" and "verbose", meaning that Cohen's translation is mostly a literal translation in a step-by-step manner, so he thinks that the reader must be eager for an essential text, which not only makes the text concise, but also more flexible. And according to our discussion of the original text above, this book cannot be called the essence at all, let alone the English translation. Another important point is that in the specific English translation process, Lee revised the confused summary text before he was well versed in Shiben, and finally translated it into English in the correct order of Shiben. For example, "Medicine King Bodhisattva Ability Twenty-three", this product should be summarized as "such as the Buddha for the Dharma King." The same is true of this scripture. The King of the Scriptures. (Yaowangpin: 16), but Lee's English translation is "Of all streams and rivers, of all waters, the sea is greatest, as God is chief in the spirit-world. So is this Scripture chief among all Scriptures”（Richard, 1910: 233）。 If compared with Shiben, the sentence "Of all streams and rivers, of all waters, the sea is greatest" is obviously the English translation of Shiben's "For example, among all rivers, the sea is the first", which is the result of Lee's self-addition with reference to Shiben. There is also a similar situation in the twentieth "Chang Bu Qing Bodhisattva Product", which summarizes that this general "should be single-minded." Widely talk about this scripture. The world is worth the Buddha. Becoming a Buddha. ("Chang Bu Qing Pin": 13) A few sentences are reversed with the order of Shiben. However, when we look at Timothy Lee's English translation, we will be surprised to find that Lee is not here based on the English translation of the summary in the wrong order, but on the English translation of the Simplified Text.
△ Figure 7: The main page of the Lotus Sutra: Exegesis and Translation
Through the above discovery and analysis of this source, I would like to say that if we do not discover this source, then a lot of historical information in it will pass us by. The study of this manuscript can at least lead to the following new conclusions: Lee is comfortable with the content of Shiben, and he also understands that the summary book is not satisfactory in terms of content. This just shows that the reason why he chose this base book is not that its content is different from that of the book, but because: first, the book is too long, and the summary is short, and he does not care how the content of the book is cut and how the content of the summary is incoherent, but he is concerned that his translation must be very different from Cohen's translation in form, because only in this way can his translation make the reader see the most "essential" part of the text in a short time, which is nothing more than a patronage promotion of his own translation. As some scholars have pointed out, the post-translation reversed its own lateness in time by misreading, thereby reversing the chronological tradition, making room for the birth of the post-translation, and earning the post-translator himself a reputation in the history of translation. Therefore, Lee's translation is essentially aimed at reducing the influence of the previous translation, so as to establish the living space of his own translation, and then establish the ideological status of his translation. In other words, the content of the original text is disrupted, and the reader is stripped of the right to read the whole text, and they can only see the Lotus Sutra from the translation, and the right to speak in the translation is completely in the hands of Lee.
What is the difference between the study of translation history and the study of translation in general? The above examples show that the history of translation is more about letting historical materials speak, because the established history does not deceive the reader.