Table Of ContentXiaojia Huang
English-Chinese
Translation as
Conquest and
Resistance in the Late
Qing 1811-1911
A Postcolonial Perspective
English-Chinese Translation as Conquest and
Resistance in the Late Qing 1811-1911
Xiaojia Huang
English-Chinese Translation
as Conquest and Resistance
in the Late Qing 1811-1911
A Postcolonial Perspective
Xiaojia Huang
School of Foreign Studies
South China Normal University
Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
This research has been supported by Guangdong Province Philosophy and Social Science
Planning Project (广东省哲学社会科学规划项目) [Grant No. GD18WXZ15].
ISBN 978-981-13-7571-2 ISBN 978-981-13-7572-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7572-9
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Acknowledgments
First of all, I am profoundly indebted to Professor Wang Yougui. As the usher of my
entrance into the threshold of the studies of translation history, he perfectly showed
me how to locate a joint point connecting Western translation theories and the trea-
sure of Chinese history. His pioneering research on Fanyijia Lu Xun (Lu Xun as a
Translator) has greatly inspired the writing of this book and contributed consider-
ably to its theoretical framework. Without his erudition, insight, encouragement,
criticism and patience, this book would never have been accomplished.
My special thanks go to Professor Wang Dongfeng who not only inspired me
with his series of treatises on postcolonial translation studies but also gave this book
many constructive comments. I have benefited a great deal from Professor Ping
Hong and Professor Feng Zhilin who have both left their imprint on this book by
pointing out many errors and providing with plenty of invaluable advice for improve-
ment and Professor Yu Dong and Professor Mo Aiping who made their contribu-
tions to the formation of the final version.
I also owe my thanks to Dr. Xiong Tao at Kyushu University who sent me the
materials that were badly needed for my research but seriously absent in the home
libraries and Dr. Liu Wenjun who never scrupled to share with me his abundant col-
lection of books and interesting academic ideas and Dr. Fu Linling who had lent me
a couple of precious monographs that enabled me to track on the Hong Kong schol-
ars’ research on postcolonial translation.
Particularly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the editor Ms.
Rebecca and her colleagues, as well as the anonymous reviewers. Without their
patience, guidance and assistance, the publication of this book may have ended up
a total failure.
v
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Why the Late Qing 1811–1911? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Why a Postcolonial Perspective? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Conquest, Resistance and Translation as Conquest
and Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3.1 Conquest and Translation as Conquest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3.2 Resistance as an Established Term
of Translation Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.3 Redefining Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.4 Translation as Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Translation as Conquest and Resistance: An Analytical Model . . . 7
1.4.1 The Causes of Translation History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4.2 Aristotle’s Four Causes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.3 An Analytical Model Based on Aristotle’s Four Causes . . . 8
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Translation as Conquest and Resistance: A Historical Overview . . . 11
2.1 Research on Translation as Conquest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Research on Translation as Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3 E-C Translation as Conquest in the Late Qing 1811–1911 . . . . . . . . . 19
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.2 Bible Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.1 Bible: “The Word of God” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.2 “Preach the Gospel to Every Creature” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2.3 Terms of God: Tianzhu, Shangdi or Shen? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.2.4 Competitive Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3 Translation of Unequal Treaties 1842–1860 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3.1 Unequal Treaties: Covenants Between
“Conqueror and Vanquished” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
vii
viii Contents
3.3.2 Translating Tributary System into Treaty System . . . . . . . . 44
3.3.3 Deceiving Translation of the Sino-British
Unequal Treaties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4 E-C Translation as Resistance in the Late Qing 1811–1911 . . . . . . . . 73
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.2 Translation of Western Humanities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2.1 Western Humanities: Key to China’s
“Wealth and Power” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2.2 Tianyanlun: Towards “Self-Strengthening
and Race Preservation” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.2.3 Yan Fu’s Strategy: Making Shifts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.2.4 Elegant Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.3 Translation of Western Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3.1 Fiction: “An Incredible Power to Dominate
the Way of Man” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3.2 Rendering Uncle Tom’s Cabin for “Our Race
is on the Verge of being Slaved” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.3.3 Lin Shu’s Strategies: De-Christianization
and Subjectivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.3.4 Gracious Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Why the Late Qing 1811–1911?
With the rapid advances of capitalism, the nineteenth century witnessed a great
surge in European colonialism. As an increasing number of countries and regions
were becoming colonies during the colonial expansion, China, the sleeping giant,
was unavoidably brought onto the ambitious agenda of the Western conquerors. In
1811, a religious book was rendered and published by Robert Morrison, the earliest
pioneer missionary sent by London Missionary Society (LMS) to China. The very
first English-to-Chinese rendition ever found at the start of the nineteenth century
(Xiong 1994, p. 7) signifies the first Western attempt in a series of ideological con-
quests of China. In the following 100 years, from 1811 till 1911 when the Qing
Dynasty was overthrown, a great number of Western books in English were trans-
lated and published in China, ushering an interesting question under the observation
of this study: what are the roles played by these translations in this period? To
answer this question, a proper perspective is demanded that preferably recognizes
translation more than a sheer inter-textual transformation.
1.2 Why a Postcolonial Perspective?
During the time-honored translation history, translation was long defined as a tex-
tual code-switching process, thus the challenges of translation research did not go
beyond pondering over such questions as to how to decide in the word-for-word and
sense-for-sense dilemma, or how to achieve the illusionary equivalence. As a result,
the attention was mostly confined to the intra-textual linguistic variations that affect
the process of translating.
It was not until the 1970s that some translation researchers, led by Susan Bassnett
and Andre Lefereve, commenced to realize that the focus on texts alone would not
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 1
X. Huang, English-Chinese Translation as Conquest and Resistance in the Late
Qing 1811-1911, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7572-9_1
2 1 Introduction
solve all the problems relevant to translation. Therefore, some of them decided that
translation should be studied in relation to cultural settings, thus triggering the land-
mark “cultural turn” in Translation Studies.
Starting from the later years of the 1980s, some translation scholars who were
not satisfied with the solutions to translation problems offered by cultural studies,
sought to expand their research to include more peripheral factors that had long
been neglected—politics, power and empire. Among them, Eric Cheyfitz, Tejaswini
Niranjana, Vince Rafael, Lawrence Venuti, Haroldo de Campos display exclusive
interest in the investigation of the roles that translations play within the colonial and
postcolonial contexts. Their insightful researches have won them titles of postcolo-
nial translation theorists, and their brilliant contributions have inevitably evoked a
“postcolonial turn” in Translation Studies.
According to Robinson (2014), postcolonial studies are traditionally defined in
two ways:
The study of Europe’s former colonies since independence; how they have responded to,
accommodated, resisted or overcome the cultural legacy of colonialism during indepen-
dence. ‘Postcolonial’ here refers to cultures after the end of colonialism. The historical
period covered is roughly the second half of the twentieth century.
The study of Europe’s former colonies since they were colonized; how they have responded
to, accommodated, resisted or overcome the cultural legacy of colonialism since its incep-
tion. ‘Postcolonial’ here refers to cultures after the beginning of colonialism. The historical
period covered is roughly the modern era, beginning in the sixteenth century.1 (pp. 13–14)
It is understandable, therefore, that China, which, as a whole has not been for-
mally and fully colonized by the Western powers since the rise of European colo-
nialism, seems a missing link or has vanished in these so called “post-independence”
(Robinson 2014, p.15) or “post-European” (Robinson 2014, p. 15) studies.
However, postcolonial studies should not necessarily be confined to the periods
after a country is colonized. It may include “the study of all cultures/societies/coun-
tries/nations in terms of their power relations with other cultures/etc.” (Robinson
2014, p. 14), in the context of which, postcolonialism refers to “our late-twentieth-
century perspective on political and cultural power relations” (Robinson 2014,
p. 14), or more specifically, on “how conqueror cultures have bent conquered cul-
tures to their will; how conquered cultures have responded to, accommodated,
resisted or overcome that coercion” (Robinson 2014, p. 14).
This book adopts postcolonialism in its broadest sense, the historical period cov-
ered being “all human history” (Robinson 2014, p. 14). From this perspective, trans-
lation is recognized as endowed with a role of duality: both as an instrument of
conquest and a weapon of resistance throughout the human history. In this sense,
translation history does not remain archives of dull translation events and figures,
but rather, the cheering truth that reveals how translation has served as a device by
the vanquishers to overpower the vanquished, and how the vanquished has used
translation for resistance.
1 Italics in the original
1.3 Conquest, Resistance and Translation as Conquest and Resistance 3
1.3 Conquest, Resistance and Translation as Conquest
and Resistance
In this book, translation is defined “not as an innocent, transparent activity” (Bassnett
and Trivedi 1999, p. 2), but rather, as an instrument of conquest and a channel of
resistance. Being one of the perpetual themes of postcolonial studies (Ashcroft et al.
1995), conquest and resistance, however, are unexpectedly absent from the
Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2001) edited by John C. Hawley probably
because the two terms are assumed to be so self-evident that the scholars of postco-
lonial studies do not bother to agree upon them. However, as they frequently show
up in this study as two key postcolonial concepts, a clearer distinction will undoubt-
edly posit this book on a safer foundation.
1.3.1 Conquest and Translation as Conquest
In the Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (Extended Fourth
Edition), conquest is interpreted as: “1. conquering (eg of a country and its people);
defeat 2. thing got by conquering or person whose admiration or (esp) love has been
gained” (Hornby 2002, p. 561).
As a key word of the postcolonial studies, conquest is apparently more often
known for its first definition, namely, conquering or defeating of a country and its
people. In Translation and Empire: Postcolonial Theories Explained (2014) written
by Dogalas Robinsion to review the latest findings of the postcolonial translation
studies, conquest, unfortunately, is undefined, notwithstanding that it is frequently
used in relation to such words as empire, imperialism, colonization, etc.
In fact, “how conqueror cultures have bent conquered cultures to their will”
(Robinson 2014, p. 14) in Robinson’s third categorization and description of post-
colonial studies (see Sect. 1.2) has provided a cue as to how to define conquest
properly, though it is not explicated in greater detail. On the other hand, Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche was probably the first one to initiate the concept of “translaton
as conquest”. In the Gay Science published in 1882, he thinks highly of the Roman’s
appropriation of Greek literature to the extent that he even envisages translation as
“a form of conquest” (Nietzsche 2014, p. 262):
Indeed, translation was a form of conquest. Not only did one omit what was historical; one
also added allusions to the present and, above all, struck out the name of the poet and
replaced it with one’s own – not with any sense of theft but with the very best conscience of
the imperium Romanum.2 (Nietzsche 2014, p. 262)
“Translation as conquest” suggests that the translator should not be bound to
source text but should instead render in a way to bring his own will into full play
(Zhong and Fang 2001, p. 23), which is more literarily or culturally oriented than
2 Italics in the original
