Yan Fu studied at the Fujian Arsenal Academy (福州船政学堂) in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. In 1877–79 he studied at the Navy Academy in Greenwich, England. Upon his return to China, he was unable to pass the Imperial Civil Service Examination, while teaching at the Fujian Arsenal Academy and then Beiyang Naval Officers' School (北洋水师学堂) at Tianjin.
It was not until after the Chinese defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95, fought for control of Korea) that Yan Fu became famous. He is celebrated for his translations, including Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology. Yan critiqued the ideas of Darwin and others, offering his own interpretations.
The ideas of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" were introduced to Chinese readers through Huxley's work. The former idea was famously rendered by Yan Fu into Chinese as tianze (天择).
He became a respected scholar for his translations, and became politically active. In 1895 he was involved in the Gongche Shangshu movement. In 1912 he became the first principal of National Peking University (now Peking University).
He became a royalist and conservative who supported Yuan Shikai (袁世凯) and Zhang Xun (张勋) to proclaim themselves emperor in his later life. He also participated the foundation of Chouanhui (筹安会), an organization which supported restoring monarchy. He has laughed at "New Literature Revolutionaries" like Hu Shi (胡适).
Yan stated in the preface to his translation of Evolution and Ethics (天演论) that "there are three difficulties in translation: faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance" (译事三难：信达雅). He did not set them as general standards for translation and did not say that they were independent of each other. However, since the publication of that work, the phrase "faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance" has been attributed to Yan Fu as a standard for any good translation and has become a cliché in Chinese academic circles, giving rise to numerous debates and theses. Some scholars argue that this dictum actually derived from British theoretician of translation, Alexander Fraser Tytler.
Infromation from wikpedia
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Preliminary Study of
Yan Fu¡¯s Main Translation Thought
Abstract: Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance are Yan Fu¡¯s main translation thought. Faithfulness means that the translator should transmit the meanings or thoughts from the originals during translating. Expressiveness demands that the version must be clear and flowing without any grammatical mistakes or confused logic and sense. Elegance is also a standard of Yan Fu¡¯s translation thought. Translating is not to copy information from the original, but a creative project. ¡°The criteria of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance summarized the scattered translation views in theory, brought up a standard for the later translation theory specific and practical, and promoted the Chinese translation theory up to a new stage¡±(ºØÏÔ±ó£¬2002).
Key words: Translation; Yan Fu; Faithfulness; Expressiveness; Elegance
I. Introduction Yan Fu, the great translator, educationist in modern history of China, was born in Fujian province. In 1886, he passed the entrance examination of Mawei Ships and Military School by high score. After graduation, he received a practical training in a naval vessel. In 1877, as a member of the navy, he went to the British Imperial Navy School for study. During those times, he studied the professional knowledge. Besides, he gave his mind to western philosophy, sociology and politics. Later, he has made a survey of the justice process in British court, and then compared with that in China. After he retuned, he served the post of the coach in Mawei Ships and Military School.
Except the political and academic articles, most of Yan Fu¡¯s works are about translation. His contributions to translation include two aspects: theory and practice. In theory, the greatest achievement is that he brought up ¡°faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance¡± (Ñϸ´£¬1986), which summarized the scattered translation views in theory, brought up a standard for the later translation theory specifically and practically, and promoted the Chinese translation theory up to a new stage.
II. The Core of Yan Fu¡¯s Translation Thought
Since Yan Fu brought up the ¡°Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance¡±, it became the condensation of the translation theory in ancient China, and the focus of modern translation study. Some people regarded them as principles, some considered them were theories, and some thought they were standards. Each famous people of the translation circle aired their own views, commendatory or derogatory, but no one could surpass them. Therefore, some thought that studying the ¡°Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance¡± is equal to study the whole translation theories of China. Thus it can be seen, Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance influenced profoundly in the translation circle of China.
In the different period, different people in the translation circle had different viewpoints to the ¡°Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance¡±. Lin Yutang brought up the standard of ¡°Faithfulness, Fluency and Beauty¡±, but this doesn't overstep the ¡°Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance¡±(ÁÖÓïÌã¬1937).
Mentioning the standard of ¡°Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance¡±, most scholars don¡¯t think to deny it or discard it simply, but amend it or expound it. Some people stated the standard from the angle of linguistics: Faithfulness is the equivalents of meanings, Expressiveness is the equivalents of the styles of writing, and Elegance is the equivalents of the functions. Some thought Yan¡¯s standard is a pattern of translation. It promotes esthetics of phraseology to the peak.
Faithfulness means that the translator should transmit the meanings or thoughts from the originals during translating. In other words, the translation should reflect the whole information accurately and completely. The information maybe include the meanings and thoughts of the author, the culture and customs of a country, the life-style and the way of thinking of the people and so on.
Then, how to achieve it during translating? First of all, comprehensive quality of the translator is very important. That is, he should learn the culture and customs of other countries directly or indirectly. One of the ways may be to read a lot of books, materials or works on many subjects, to study in many fields, such as literature, history, philosophy, and astronomy, geography. Second, he should learn the culture and customs of other countries directly or indirectly. According to Yan Fu, to learn the western culture and custom, the best way is to study the foreign language, then read the western books, observe and learn from the western life(Ñϸ´£¬1986). To achieve this, one cannot only learn the western culture realistically, but also read books unlimitedly.
Therefore, to achieve Faithfulness during translating, one may learn the foreign culture by learning its language first. Then receive more knowledge indirectly. Besides, it¡¯s also an effective way to live abroad for some periods. After being a member of the society of country, you will learn much more things at there gradually.
According to Yan Fu, Expressiveness in translating means the translation should be logical. If the translation is just a collection of all the information from the originals, the readers couldn¡¯t understand it. Of course, as a translator, to make readers catching the general idea of the translation is the basic work.
However, how to achieve Expressiveness when translating? It all depends. Expressiveness dose not mean that translator will use the same, single way to treat different kinds of originals. That is, different originals will be treated in different ways. For example, literature will be translated in literature languages, political works will be stated in some political terms, while when you translating something about medical, technology, law, the related terminologies should be used accurately and properly, that is, if the scientific technicalities are used in a poem improperly, readers will be not understand it correctly. Therefore, to achieve Expressiveness, one should learn the characters of different kinds of types of writing and choose the proper way to express it.
Elegance is also a standard of Yan¡¯s translation thought. Translating is not the information copied from the originals, but a creative project. A perfect translation is not only faithful and expressive, but also elegant. Elegance is the higher request of language. That is, the translation should be elegant.
III. Conclusion Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance formed a whole translation thought. But they play different roles in it. Some people thought, the effective Faithfulness is the preliminary level of Expressiveness, and Expressiveness is the higher level of Faithfulness, while the Expressiveness is the highest level of Faithfulness and Expressiveness.
In a word, Yan Fu¡¯s translation theory of ¡°Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance¡± influenced the translation circle deeply. A lot of scholars study it, and think it is an effective standard. The criteria of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance summarized the scattered translation views in theory, brought up a standard for the later translation theory specific and practical, and promoted the Chinese translation theory up to a new stage.
参考资料：baidu