On March 21, 2018, Professor Zhu Chunshen, the famous translator in The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), came to our university and gave a lecture entitled "the Difference between 'Harmony' and 'Truth' in Translation" at the School of Foreign Language, Shenzhen University.
The lecture reflected on the so called three 'creeds' in translation: "faithfulness, fluency and Elegance". Professor Zhu quoted the original words of Yan Fu's Evolution of Nature, pointing out the misunderstanding of "faithfulness, fluency and elegance" – considering it as the standard of translation - would lead to too much emphasis on the practicality of translation. Zhu questioned this practical view, arguing that the excessive emphasis on the employment of tools and language often leads to the neglecting of the philosophy behind them. Professor Zhu tends to regard translation as the reflection of the original works in the translator's psychology, and re-examined the "faithfulness, fluency and accuracy" on top of that, requiring the translator to be responsible for their translation and to carry out "virtual translation" after gained a full understanding of the source text.
At the end of the lecture, Professor Zhu shared his personal understanding of Liu Zongyuan's poem "River Snow" and discussed the translation of the poem with the audience, so as to interpret his translation views better through translation practices. Professor Zhu's lecture was logical, which made dialectical reflections on "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance", thus benefited the teachers and students greatly. The lecture ended with warm applause.
