Translating principles of translation: Cross-cultural and multi-brain perspectives

Yan Fu’s has rarely been directly challenged but is frequently compared with Tytler’s Principles of Translation. These two sets of principles match both in number and in the exact order of three parallel concepts. Given the canonical status of Tytler’s principles since its publication in 1790, it is hard to imagine that Yan was not influenced by Tytler in forming his principles. Following this assumption, we explore possible accounts of why and how Tytler’s three Principles of Translation could be “translated” into Yan’s “Xìn-Dá-Yǎ.” We note that Tytler’s was ranked in descending order of importance: the First General Law, which is the most important, requires a complete transcript of the original ideas (i.e., Xìn), whereas expressing the style and manner of the original writing (i.e., Dá) and achieving the ease of the original composition (i.e., Yǎ) are supplementary as the Second and Third General Laws. Yet Yan’s principles tend to be understood in reverse order of importance. We explore this mismatch from cross-cultural and multi-brain perspectives based on a comparable corpora approach. Through comparing BNC with the Gigaword Chinese Corpus, it is revealed that cultural differences in the meanings of the ordinals first and third lead to the overlook of the foundational concept in English that “the first principle” is the most important, and the mistaking of the third law (Yǎ) as the highest one in China. This reconfiguration of cultural meanings underlines the nature of translation as a multi-brain activity situated in cultural contexts.