19世纪 Aesop’s Fables 中译本的译介与传播研究 ― 《伊索寓言》罗伯聃中译本在東亞的傳播

Abstract

The first Chinese translation of Aesop’s Fables-Kuang Yi 《况义》appeared in the 17th century. More than two centuries later, an English merchant Robert Thom, in the thirties and forties of the 19th century, cooperated with his Chinese teacher in translating Aesop’s Fables into the second Chinese version. From the wonderful life experience of Robert Thom and his academia-recognized achievements in Chinese language, the second Chinese version of Aesop’s Fables cannot be regarded as merely a historical accidental fruit of his. The author, with the Chinese Repository-a monthly English news which had a huge influence in South China in the middle of the 19th century as the thread, deduced the first version of Robert Thom’s Chinese translation of Aesop’s Fables, was YiShiMiZhuan 《意拾秘传》. It was published in between 1837 and 1838. It is the former version of YiShiYuYan 《意拾喻言》 of 1840(82 stories). So we shall combine YiShiMiZhuan and YiShiYuYan to figure out the intention of Robert Thom’s translation, summing up as: to input a literary style-fable into the minds of Chinese readers, and embed preaching and satirizing into a pleasant reading; in the meantime what is strongly emphasized is the function of facilitating foreigners’ learning of Chinese language. Marked as the “ladder to Chinese way”, YiShiYuYan of 1840 was issued, spreading the Chinese translation of Aesop’s Fables, by the hand of Robert Thom, into southeast and north China, and even to foreign countries as Singapore and Japan. This version has various forms such as a single Chinese language, Chinese dialects and multi-languages. The Chinese translation of Robert Thom is the Chinese version of the earliest, most influential, and most penetrated in the 19th century. The title of the translation had been changed several times, but its intrinsic satirizing and preaching features of Aesop’s Fables never left its Chinese version. Taking a pleasing literary form, it is escalated in turns to the social and political height of “drum to warn the world, and bell to break the dream”. Viewed from his intention of the translation, Robert Thom’s Chinese version can be called a door-knocking brick to import western values and thoughts. Because of its influence, an important place shall be reserved in the early modern history of Chinese translation as well as in the history of the communication between Chinese and western culture.