Translating Darwin’s Metaphors in East Asia
Publisher : Ewha Institute for the Humanities: EIH
Research Area : Other Humanities
1Seoul National University
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In this essay, I aim to analyze the process of translating Charles Darwin’s language to Chinese or Japanese Kanji, and also to contemplate on the usage and the newly attached meanings of the translated language of evolutionism in East Asia. To this end, I begin to trace Chinese and Japanese documents, including the papers and the magazines and some translated books which introduced evolutionary theory as scientific knowledge for the first time, published during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. As Darwin’s metaphorical expressions were given a more specific meaning through Japanese kanji by scholars such as Hiroyuki Kato, their role as a “theory” of evolution exploring the origin of life form was less recognized, and instead emphasis was placed on “evolutionism” which justified the power struggles between the strong and the weak. Second, I compare two Chinese translations of the European theory of evolution. One is Yan Fu’s direct translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, and the other is the first Chinese translation of Darwin’s Origin of Species based on the Japanese translation. Both translated versions diverged from Darwin’s usage of metaphors and were appropriated through the translator’s own pre–existing intellect and the surrounding social conditions. To sum up, Darwin’s use of metaphors was an appropriation of words written by previous scholars for the purpose of effectively delivering his opinion. However, beyond the West and its spatial boundaries of discourse, the words used in translating the theory of evolution were in fact not an example of metaphor but political action. In the culture sphere that shares Chinese characters, the Chinese translations that took place in countries that differ in culture and history were examples of an intersemiotic translation of language that closely resembled social practice.
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