《军国论》的转译与清末青年知识分子对西方军事的认知

Translation of Das Volk in Waffen and Young Intellectuals’ Understanding of Western Military Knowledge in the Late Qing Dynasty

杭州东文学堂青年学生于1901年翻译了德国军事思想家戈尔茨的名著《军国论》(Das Volk in Waffen)一书,这是中国最早提倡军国民主义的著译之一。比较中译文及其日文底本,发现译者将重点放在“情感唤起”而非纯军事思想上,这与强调“驯民为兵”的日译本以及德文原著都相去甚远。专业军事知识的缺失,加上国家遭受外敌侵略的焦虑,使这批青年译者不易准确理解戈尔茨军事思想中融合兵民的精粹。透过这一个案及其与同时期同类著译的比较,可呈现20世纪初年中国青年知识分子对西方军事理论的接受轨迹。

In 1901,the young students of Hangzhou Japanese School translated the famous book Das Volk in Waffen which was written by the great German military thinker Colmar Goltz.This book was one of the earliest works advocating military nationalism in China.By comparing the Chinese version with the Japanese one,we can find that the Chinese translators focused on"the emotional evocation",which was far from the Japanese version emphasizing"training people to be soldiers"and the military thoughts of the German original version.The lack of professional military knowledge and the anxiety about the imperial invasion made the young translators unable to accurately grasp the theory of integrating the army with the people in Goltz’s military thoughts.By comparing such a case to similar cases in the same period,this article demonstrates how the young Chinese intellectuals accepted the Western military theories in the early 20 th century.