Xin Da Ya is a set of translation criteria put forward by

Yan Fu Yan Fu (; courtesy name Ji Dao (); 8 January 1854 – 27 October 1921) was a Chinese military officer, newspaper editor, translator, and writer. He is most known for introducing Western ideas to China during the late 19th century. Life On Janua ...

in the preface to his 1898 translation of

Thomas Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist who specialized in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The stor ...

’s ''Evolution and Ethics'' (天演論). In the preface, Yan Fu stated that "there are three things hard to achieve in translation: faithfulness, fluency, and elegance" (譯事三難：信達雅): * Xin "信" (faithfulness) - the meaning in the target language should be faithful to the meaning of the original * Da "達" (fluency or expressiveness) - the translated text should be intelligible and in accordance with the language rules of the target language * Ya "雅" (elegance) - a translation should be aesthetically pleasing Of the three, Yan Fu identified Da (fluency) as the most important criteria for his translation of ''Evolution and Ethics'', since he believed that a translation that was not understood by its reader was useless. Yan Fu did not set these criteria as general standards for translation, and he considered it impossible to achieve all three aspects of ''Xin Da Ya'' at the same time. Nonetheless, ''Xin Da Ya'' was revolutionary for its time and marked a new era in Chinese translation. In modern times, it has been surpassed by translation approaches such as

Skopos theory Skopos theory (German: ''Skopostheorie'') is a theory in the field of translation studies that employs the prime principle of a purposeful action that determines a translation strategy. The intentionality of a Skopos theory#Definition, translation ...

and

corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...

that better serve the needs of contemporary translation users, particularly commercial clients. However, ''Xin Da Ya'' continues to be useful when used to complement Western translation theories.{{Cite thesis , last=Liu , first=Xiaomei , title=A comparative study of Yan Fu’s Xin Da Ya and three Western translation theories: Possible implications to document translation , date=2006-01-01 , degree=M.A. , publisher=The University of Queensland , url=https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:211143 , doi=10.14264/211143 , language=en , pages=46-48, url-access=subscription

References

Translation studies Chinese literature Chinese literary aspects

See also

References