Translation And The Development Of Modern Chinese (1905-1936)

The period from 1905 to 1936 has been of unusual significance for modernChinese,which witnessed the rise and prevalence of vernacular Chinese as writtenlanguage in the academic world.Traditional vernacular Chinese,which forms thebasis of modern Chinese,had been greatly influenced by translation in its transition tomodern vernacular Chinese.In some sense,the establishment of modern Chinese isexactly the process how Chinese changed under the influence of translation.As part ofthe intense social-cultural transformation of the time,translation had been endowedwith unprecedented social importance to upgrade the Chinese language,in turn,totransform the Chinese society.Due to the unique social-culture nature of this research,this dissertation tries to study how translation had influenced the establishment ofmodern Chinese in the light of this special social cultural period.The probability andlimits of Europeanization is also discussed in this dissertation with the help oflarge-scale corpus tools.This study provides a new social-cultural perspective forlanguage contact study and enriches the study by the exploration on the limits oflanguage evolution.This dissertation consists of seven chapters.Chapter One Introduction.This chapter reviews the research history of this studyfrom both literature/culture perspective and linguistic perspective,and introduces theresearch methodology and framework.Chapter Two Translation and Language.Translation had played an important rolein the evolution of many languages in the history.Globally speaking,Martin Luther'sversion of the Bible directly led to the reunification of the German language;Englishin different stages of development had changed subject to the constant influence fromtranslation;as to Russian and Japanese,translation also exerted influence in somecrucial historic moments.In the history of China,translation also has the privilege ofassisting in every important shift of the Chinese language,the long-lasted efforts intranslating Buddhist scriptures is a case in point.The translation of science andtechnology works in late Ming and early Qing dynasty,the post-Opium-Wartranslation of western learning and the Bible translation all had immeasurable effectsin the change of Chinese Language.In this chapter,we will review the history and discuss the important roles translation once played in the development of nationallanguages.Chapter Three Translation and modem Chinese.In this chapter,we talk about thespecial cultural mission that translation is endowed with in the establishment ofwritten modem Chinese during 1905-1936.This part of the study focuses on thecollection and analysis of historical documents.Files and documents on translationhistory and literary movement since 1905,the movement of vernacular Chinese inparticular,are of our priority concern.Taking into account the contemporarypublications,this chapter aims at presenting an overview of the social-culturalbackground of the time.This chapter begins with the differentiating of three concepts—traditionalvernacular,modem vernacular and plain classical Chinese—with a view to definingEuropeanized Grammar.The chapter goes on to elaborate on the idea that translationhasserved as one ofthe origins of modern Chinese and divide 1905-1936 into threesub-periods in terms of different social-cultural roles translation had played:1.1905-1917,Spontaneous Europeanization.Due to the limited vision,thissub-period was characterized by the translation of new things,concepts and customs.Few translators were aware of the significance of translation in transforming theChinese language and literature.The translation languages of this period were mainlyplain classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese.Literal translation and the consequentEuropeanized grammar had emerged in quite a few works,which,though,was notintended by the translators,so we regard this period as"spontaneousEuropeanization".Thus,Europeanized grammar is not only generated from deliberateattempts of transforming Chinese,but also the natural result of the contact andcollision of two languages.2.1918-1928 Intentional Europeanization.The arrival of the 1918 lifted thecurtain of a nation-wide discussion on translation and Chinese modernization.Thelandmark articles by Hu Shi and Fu Sinian on how translation might transformed theChinese language were all published in this year,which forcefully pushed forward themovement of vernacular Chinese.From Jan.15^th,1918,New Youth began to usevernacular Chinese and western style punctuation exclusively,the great impact of which heralded the coming of a brand new era.The rise of Modern ChineseMovement made vernacular the prevailing translation language and literal translationthe prevailing practice.Zhou Zuoren,Fu Sinian,Lu Xun,Liu Bannong and Mao Dun,etc.wrote quite a number of articles concerning translation methods.Hu Shi,FuSinian and Lu Xun specifically called for recourse to western languages forinnovations in Chinese,which encouraged many advocates to practice literaltranslation and adopted new expressions from translation in writing.Therefore,wecall this period"Intentional Europeanization".The period also saw the emergence ofan influential grammar book on vernacular Chinese New grammar for WrittenChinese by Li Jinxi.Copycatting the grammar system of English,this grammar book,in a sense,legalized Europeanized grammar.3.1929-1936,Reflection on Europeanization.Although Fu Sinian's advocacy ofEuropeanized Chinese once stirred some debates in the academic world uponproposition (1918),the voice of support was predominating.On the eve of 1930s,however,the outcries over Europeanization were increasingly heard.Liang Shiqiuwas the first to voice disapproval on Lu Xun"word-for-word translation",followedby Qu Qiubai,a firm advocate for"a language for all people",who called theEuropeanized Chinese"new classical hybrid".Hence we call this period"Reflectionon Europeanization".Though we use the word"reflection",a careful review ofliterature reveals that the conflicts on translation and Europeanization of this periodwere more of political reasons than linguistic concerns.An overall study ofEuropeanized Chinese didn't appear until ten years later in Wang Li's ModernChinese Grammar (1943).As to such questions as whether translation can"transform"Chinese,if yes,how and to what extent,have not been studiedsystematically,which will be our main concerns in the following several chapters.Chapter Four How Translation Influenced Chinese.It has been established thatlanguage contact can bring language changes,but very little do we know about themechanism of how it works,much less about the interaction of internal and externalmechanism of change.In this chapter,we will focus on the new structures widelyused during 1905-1936 with an aim to examining how translation,a typical indirectcontact,influenced Chinese and the role Chinese played in accepting,assimilating and rejecting alien structures.As an external causation,translation activities have,intentionally or accidentally,introduced large number of new words and structures toChinese.When translation activities coincided with the transition period of theChinese language,their role as external trigger consummated with the holy mission of"transforming Chinese".It has been elaborated in this chapter how translation hadexerted its influence on many aspects of Chinese syntax through direct introduction aswell as activating and expanding original Chinese structures.All these newgrammatical phenomenon,however,are subject to the selection of intrinsic rules ofChinese,those of which differ too much from Chinese habits cannot survive in theend.Chapter Five Europeanization and the Development of Modern Chinese.Translation had played a vital important role in the modernization of Chinese,whichhad brought tremendous changes to various aspects of Chinese including lexis,grammar,discourse and literature:a.new words fill the lexical gaps of Chinese andbring changes to lexicalization of Chinese;b.newgrammatical categories fill thegrammatical gaps of Chinese;c.new structures enrich the expressions of Chinese;d.Europeanized grammar make Chinese more precise in expressing things and morecapable in expressing complex thoughts;e.new cohesion devices enrich the existingmethods used in Chinese discourse;f.Europeanized grammar enhanced Chineseexpressive force in describing delicate and complex matters.Chapter Six Europeanization and its limits.It is undeniable fact that translationhas caused changes in Chinese,but such changes are subject to limitations due to thefact that there exist two forces competing and interacting with each other:on the onehand,Europeanized grammar,as an external force,triggered changes in variousaspects of Chinese ranging from vocabulary,grammar,to discourse;on the other hand,the intrinsic rules of Chinese constantly govern the changes resulted fromEuropeanization,absorbing which can be fitted in and rejecting which can't.Theinterplaying of these two forces determines that the Europeanization of Chinese isboth possible and limited.The modernization of Chinese is also the process thatborrowed lexis and Europeanized grammar pass the trial of Chinese to be absorbed orrejected.In this process,the characteristics of Chinese language,the mental features of Chinese people and the Chinese culture work together to decide the limits ofEuropeanization.Chapter Seven Conclusions and Implications.This chapter summarizes thenecessity,probability and limits of the Europeanized grammar and reveals thesignificance of this study on language contact.