跨越时空的对话——徐光启和李善兰翻译《几何原本》研究

Dialogues Between Xu Guangqi and Li Shanlan Across Time and Space: A Study on Their Translations of Ji He Yuan Ben

徐光启和李善兰分别为明末与清末著名科技翻译家,二者虽处于不同的时空,但都凭借自身的科技翻译活动促进了西学东渐,对当时及后世影响深远。本文基于史料爬梳徐、李翻译数学西籍《几何原本》的活动,分析二者在翻译目的、翻译选材、译介方式、翻译特色方面的相同之处,并从二人所处的时代背景、诞生的地理位置和具备的个人品质出发,探讨产生这种相同之处的原因,管窥其如何跨越时空,在翻译中进行对话,以期助力《几何原本》的翻译研究和有关徐光启与李善兰两位科技翻译家的研究。

Xu Guangqi was a preeminent scitech translator in the late Ming Dynasty while Li Shanlan was his counterpart in the late Qing Dynasty. Although living in totally different historical periods, they did contribute to the dissemination of Western learning in China with Western science and culture at its core, which had an influence on both that time and later ages.Based on sorting out the historical materials regarding Xu's and Li's translations of Ji He Yuan Ben, this article finds out the similarities in their translation skopos, text selection principles,organizing patterns and translation features, and explores the causes for such similarities from historical, geographic, and individual perspectives,to see how Xu and Li have made dialogues with each other across time and space via translating distinct parts of the same book. This article aims to promote translation studies of Ji He Yuan Ben and studies on the two sci-tech translators Xu Guangqi and Li Shanlan.