Before concluding, I would like to add one more comment, which is about Yan Fu (嚴復)'s translation practice. To be honest, although I am in the “for” group (of Yan Fu’s iconic "Xin Da Ya" (信達雅) principle, meaning fidelity, comprehensibility and elegance), I got really puzzled when I read the following sentences by Yan Fu:
“My translation has been criticized for its abstruse language (pre-Han Chinese) and involved style. But I must say this is the result of my determined effort at comprehensibility” （原文：「不佞此譯，頗貽艱深文陋之譏，實則刻意求顯，不過如是。」《天演論》譯例言）
('Preface to Tianyanlun'; translated by C.Y. Hsu)
Okay. It appears that Yan Fu had heard the criticisms about his translated works, but he still insisted on translating in the syntax and style of the pre-Han period. And Classical Chinese for comprehensibility? This doesn’t make sense!
To understand why Yan Fu said so, we have to do a more in-depth analysis.
Yan Fu’s translation purpose and his target readership
First, as my group-mates mentioned last week, Yan Fu had deliberately chose to translate the masterpieces of Western social science, including The Wealth of Nations (《原富》) by Adam Smith, and The Study of Sociology (《群學肄言》) by Herbert Spencer. These titles are not novels, not poems. So I don’t think Walter Benjamin’s idiosyncratic saying: “No poem is intended for readers” can be applied in this case.
So who are Yan Fu's target audience? Of course it’s not us! Actually, in a letter written to his friend, Yan Fu clearly stated his translation purpose and mentioned about his target readership:
嚴復於1901年給張元濟的書信：
「然終謂民智不開，則守舊維新兩無一可。即使朝廷今日不行一事，抑所為皆非，但令在野之人與夫後生英俊（英俊：才能出眾之士）洞識中西實情者日多一日，則炎黃種類未必遂至淪胥；即不幸暫被羈縻，亦將有復蘇之一日也。」
「然終謂民智不開，則守舊維新兩無一可。即使朝廷今日不行一事，抑所為皆非，但令在野之人與夫後生英俊（英俊：才能出眾之士）洞識中西實情者日多一日，則炎黃種類未必遂至淪胥；即不幸暫被羈縻，亦將有復蘇之一日也。」
(《嚴復集》，第3冊頁525)
As you can see, his ambition was to save his ailing country through introducing thoughts of Western modern society. And his target readers? The officers and literati at that time.
Yan Fu’s translation strategy
But these alone cannot tell the whole story. Let me ask you a question here:
What is your chance of winning the Mark Six Lottery tomorrow?
No matter who you are, your chance of getting all the six numbers correct is about one in ten billionths (~1/100,000,000). Notwithstanding the exceedingly low probability, people still queue up to buy lottery tickets. Why?
One of the reasons is that people tend to overestimate themselves. (“I’m going to win, you fool!”) In psychology, such cognitive bias is known as illusory superiority or the Lake Wobegon
What I want to point out is that intellectuals were not saints! Man is not a rational animal. It is not surprising to see some of them having cognitive bias or even resistance against Western works; especially considering that they had studied the Four Books and Five Classics (四書五經) for their entire life!
English literary scholar and famous translator Wang Zuo-liang (王佐良) summed it up with a metaphor. He said Yan Fu sugar-coated the Western classics with a pre-Han elegant style so that those "soundly sleeping" intellectuals gladly took them in.
「嚴復又認識到這些書 (西學名著) 對於那些仍在中古的夢鄉裏酣睡的人，是多麼難以下咽的苦藥，因此他在上面塗了糖衣，這糖衣就是士大夫所心折的漢以前的古雅文體。 」
(《嚴復的用心》）
Behind the "Xin Da Ya" principle, Yan Fu always kept his translation purpose in mind and his target audience in sight. In the words of Friedrich Schleiermacher, the strategy adopted by Yan Fu is to move the author towards the readers.
Conclusion
Finally, we can use the comments made by Hu Shih (胡適) as our conclusion:
「《天演論》有『例言』幾條，中有云：『譯事三難信達雅』這些話是當日的實情。」
（《胡適文存》二集卷二）
Number one, “Xin Da Ya” was the most appropriate translation strategy at Yan Fu’s time.
「當時自然不便用白話，若用白話，便沒人讀了…… 嚴復用古文譯書，正如前清官僚戴着紅頂子演說，很能抬高譯書的身份。」
（《胡適文存》二集卷二）
Second, Mr. Hu presumed that no one would ever read Tianyanlun (Evolution and Ethics) if it was translated in vernacular Chinese. Therefore, in practice it’s important for us to have an eye on our translation purpose and intended readers at all times, and don’t forget to pick the right strategy.
Thank you very much.
Reference:
Yan Fu (1901). ‘Preface to Tianyanlun’. In Twentieth-Century Chinese Translation Theory: Modes, issues and debates, translated by C. Y. Hau and edited by Chan, Leo Tak-hung, Amsterdam
胡適：《胡適文存》二集卷二，上海亞東圖書館，1924年。
王佐良：《嚴復的用心》，《論嚴復與嚴譯名著》，商務印書館，1982年。
嚴復：《嚴復集》，中華書局，1986年，第3冊頁525。
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