东亚翻译的执拗低音——“同文”是什么?

The Basso Ostinato of Translation in East Asia--What Is Dobun?

众所周知,《礼记中庸》中的“同文同轨”指使用相同的文字,相同车轮宽度的意思,也转指天下统一。19世纪中叶至20世纪初期,被观念化的特有的概念“同文”指在不同国家和民族间使用相同的文字。近代日本的亚洲主义者也特意使用“同文”一词,旨在与强大的中国一体化以对抗西方列强,最后却迎来了1945年的战败。但是,中日两国在接触近代西洋知识,以及急速发展的相互认识上,“同文”的存在引发了许多不可思议的现象。日本在对西方诸语言进行翻译的过程中,有效地利用并推广了“汉字”,创造了大量的新词。梁启超等中国知识分子为了便利起见,在翻译中借用了大量的日语新造词,由此出现了西洋诸语?圯日语?圯汉语?圯西洋诸语翻译理论上“三位一体”的现象。可以清晰地察觉,西洋诸语与日语之间,西洋诸语与汉语之间,发生了“翻译”这一语言行为。

“Dobun-doki”means using the same Chinese characters and the same wheel width in The Book of Rites,so it also refers to a united world.During the period from the mid-19th century to the early 20thcentury,Dobun referred tothe same language used by different nations.Japanese Asianistsadopted the word in order to form an alliance with Chinato confront the West.However,Dobun brought about some marvellous phenomena.In their translation of werstern languages,Japanese created a large number of new words through Chinese characters.Chinese intellectuals like Liang Qichao conveniently borrowed many new Japanese words in their own translations,and translation can be said to taken place between western languages and Japanese and between western languages and Chinese.This paper intends to find what really happened between Japanese and Chinese in the name of Dobun.