Wan Zhaoyuan
a Lanzhou Jiaotong University, China; The University of Oxford , UK.
Ann Sci. 2018 Jan;75(1):1-20. doi: 10.1080/00033790.2018.1428358. Epub 2018 Feb 8.
This paper provides an account of Chinese translations of Newton's Principia produced over the past century and a half within the larger context of the dissemination of Newtonian philosophy in China. Given its fundamental importance in the history of science, the Principia, originally penned in Latin, has been translated into a number of other languages. While in all these languages no more than two full translations have appeared, as many as four complete versions in Chinese have been produced since the 1850s, when first attempts were made to translate the Principia in late imperial China. They include a 1931 version in semi-classical Chinese completed during the Republican era and three rival versions in modern Chinese published in contemporary China. This rich history of translating the Principia into Chinese, which remains little known to scholars in the West, is for the first time reconstructed and presented in English. This account is based on a meticulous scrutiny of manuscripts, historical records, secondary literature and interviews with some of the contemporary translators. It demonstrates that Chinese translation of the Principia is a complex process that involves scientific traditions, linguistic peculiarities, translators' subjectivity, readers' expectations and even the role of the market.
本文在牛顿哲学在中国传播的大背景下，介绍了过去一个半世纪里《牛顿自然哲学的数学原理》的中译本情况。鉴于《原理》在科学史上的根本重要性，它最初以拉丁文撰写，现已被翻译成多种其他语言。虽然在所有这些语言中，完整译本不超过两个，但自19世纪50年代晚清首次尝试翻译《原理》以来，中文已产生多达四个完整版本。其中包括民国时期完成的1931年半文言文译本，以及当代中国出版的三个现代汉语竞争译本。这段将《原理》翻译成中文的丰富历史，西方学者知之甚少，本文首次以英文进行重构并呈现。这一介绍基于对手稿、历史记录、二手文献的细致审视，以及对一些当代译者的访谈。它表明，《原理》的中文翻译是一个复杂的过程，涉及科学传统、语言特性、译者主观性、读者期望，甚至市场的作用。
