Anyone who knows something about China's research on the history of western philosophy knows that Hegel's Little Logic has really exerted a systematic influence on the philosophical thinking mode of China people in more and more translations of western philosophy today. The reasons are nothing more than the following. First, Hegel's book itself is the most concrete and complete pure philosophical work, and it is the masterpiece of the whole western philosophy. From this, we can glimpse and understand the most important core and secret of western way of thinking in a narrow space. Second, due to the efforts of zhang yi, He Lin and other senior scholars, Hegel's philosophy is one of the earliest western philosophical thoughts that entered China's ideological circle since the beginning of last century, and the reason why Hegel's thought flourished in China is undoubtedly related to the coincidence of many of his views with some traditional philosophies of China. Thirdly, in the second half of the 20th century, Hegel was a western thinker who was slightly impacted by various domestic political movements because of his relationship with Marxist philosophy. Therefore, the study of his thoughts is still quietly carried out in the harsh political environment. He was one of the few survivors in the garden of western philosophy in China before the downfall of the Gang of Four. Finally, the translation quality of Hegel's philosophy is very good, among which Little Logic translated by Mr. He Lin is the most representative. Mr. He himself is a famous philosopher in China's modern ideological circle. He has profound attainments in China's culture and philosophy, and has his own philosophical system ("New Mind"). Naturally, the translation of philosophers' philosophical masterpieces should take advantage of all kinds of conditions. His translation of Little Logic is not only clear and fluent, but also full of philosophical thoughts, which conveys the highly speculative thoughts of this so-called "obscure philosopher" to the fullest. Since the first edition of 1950, 1954 has been revised and reprinted, and 1962 has been reprinted 8 times, with more than 80,000 copies * *. Today, although Hegel's philosophy no longer fascinates the younger generation of scholars as it did then, Little Logic translated by He is still a best-selling book on the bookshelves of various bookstores. It can be said that Little Logic translated by He has influenced several generations of scholars in modern China, improved their thinking level and even determined the thinking direction of many people.
Of course, no translation can be perfect, especially when the ideas of the recipients of cultural communication are constantly developing. In principle, it is impossible for a classic work to make a translation an absolute "final version" once and for all, but it must always require a new translation with the change of people's understanding, the needs of the times and the change of acceptance horizon. Mr. He constantly revised his own translation before his death, which is proof. Generally speaking, the greatest advantage of Mr. He's translation is "vivid". After reading this book, China people first understood what pure "metaphysics" in the West was, and were inspired to study it deeply. However, this translation is mainly based on the English version of Varas. Although the German version of Glockner and Rasmussen was consulted and the opinions of other scholars were absorbed and revised many times, the English version remained as a whole. Moreover, as is common in the English translation of German works, there are many free translation elements in the translation of congratulations, and the word order and words used in the original German text are not strictly followed. Therefore, with the improvement of people's academic requirements, if we really want to study and scrutinize the details of Hegel's thought, we should not only thoroughly understand the essence of Hegel's thought, but also dig out some hidden meanings in his text, then the translation of He seems to be somewhat inappropriate. Although this discomfort was already manifested when Mr. He decided to revise the translation, the problem was not too prominent because of the basic stagnation of China's academic circles for more than 20 years, and almost everything started from scratch in the 1980s, and many young scholars later dismissed Hegel's philosophy. However, a few scholars realized earlier that it is necessary to retranslate the book from the original German version based on the new requirements of the times, which is a preview of the law of academic development, and Mr. Liang Zhixue is one of them.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Liang began to retranslate Little Logic according to the German version, and the first draft was completed in 1984. Later, due to various reasons, he put it down and turned to the translation of Fichte's philosophical anthology, with remarkable achievements. It was not until 200 1 that he returned to Little Logic, and the final result was a new translation published at the end of 2002. In addition to restoring the original German name "The First Logic of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy" (and noting that the general name "Little Logic" can still be used), this book is also the first translation of "Little Logic" directly from the original German text in China, which is obviously more suitable for specialized academic research on Hegel's philosophy (of course, this does not deny that congratulatory translation still has the function of enlightening and introducing Hegel's philosophy), satisfying the fact that the level of academic research in China has been significantly improved at present. Compared with the German version, I think the new version has the following advantages:
1, some translations are more accurate. Here are just two examples. There is a passage on page 260 of the He translation 198 1 that I can't understand: "In this way, it seems that new contradictions have occurred on the basis of abandoning contradictions. But as a contradiction, it does not insist on its own contradiction statically, but tries to exclude contradictions from itself. " According to Hegel, contradiction should be the source of all movements. How can we achieve "perseverance"? According to itself is a contradiction, how can contradiction "exclude itself"? Later, I looked up the original German version (Commemorative Edition of the Complete Works of Hegel, Volume 8, page 282), and the following sentence is: Alssolcher Aberist Nicht das Ruhig in Sich Beharrende? sondernville mehrabs to-Enseiner von Sich Selbst。 So the translation of this sentence is: "But as a contradiction, it does not insist on itself statically, but tries to exclude itself." (See my book "The Tension of Speculation-A New Exploration of Hegel's Dialectics", Hunan Education Press, 1992, p. 325), which means that the foundation is not a contradiction of self-exclusion. Although the meaning is straightened out here, there are still traces of accommodating congratulations on translation. Reading Mr. Liang's translation this time, I found that the translation is more faithful to the German original: "But the basis of contradiction is not what is still in itself, but the rejection of itself." (Translated by Liang, p. 232) Here, both "stalemate" (or persistence) and "exclusion" restore the gerund form of the original text, and have a more direct correspondence with the word "basis", which completely eliminates possible misunderstandings.
How to translate a paragraph on page 7: "In this way, philosophy suffered the worst fate in these hands. They pretend to study philosophy, on the one hand, to understand, on the other hand, to criticize. Many living facts in material, spiritual and especially religious aspects have been distorted because these reflective abstract concepts can't catch them. " It reads in one go and is very smooth. But Mr. Liang's translation is: "When people pretend to study philosophy, on the one hand, they want to understand it, and on the other hand, they want to comment on it. Philosophy itself will definitely encounter the worst fate in the hands of these people." It is the fact of material life or spiritual life, especially the fact of religious life, which will be distorted by reflection that cannot understand the facts. In Chadewen's original text, the clause "when ..." belongs to the main clause of "philosophy ... fate" and not to the sub-main clause of "fact ... distorted". Mr. Liang's translation is obviously more accurate. Although the meaning here is not much different, if a young man wants to learn how to translate philosophy from Mr. He's translation, and does not have Mr. He's strong rational grasp ability, he may think that it is irrelevant to disrupt the grammatical structure of the original text in this way. Nowadays, many translations are difficult to read, which is often related to the grammatical relationship and contextual structure of arbitrary mixed sentences. And Mr. Liang's translation is very rigorous in this respect.
2. Mr. Liang added 180 translator's notes in his book, which fully reflected the professionalism of the translation. These notes are not only the source of some characters, quotations and allusions, but also the introduction of some deep background knowledge. For example, a certain formulation of Hegel can be found in some other works of Hegel or the works and speeches of a philosopher before him, or the comments of later generations (such as Marx, Engels and Lenin) on this formulation; Another example is who and where Hegel first put forward a certain point of view; Another example is the context of Hegel's discussion at that time, the introduction of opponents' views and so on. The translator lists all the materials involved in the Chinese translation in detail, which greatly facilitates the reference of domestic readers. After reading these notes, people can have a comprehensive grasp of Hegel's thought. Hegel is placed in the context of the whole history of western philosophy and dialogue, not an isolated monologue. This kind of translation is extremely rare in current philosophical translation works, because it requires the translator to have extensive knowledge and profound understanding of the whole history of western philosophy, especially German classical philosophy. At present, there are few translators with this skill in China. Mr. Liang is familiar with this aspect. In addition to Fichte's Selected Works, his translated works such as Hegel's Natural Philosophy and Schelling's Transcendental Idealism System have long been well-known masterpieces, and he has deep attainments in Kant's philosophy, so many annotations are actually his long-term research experience in translation and thinking.
3. This kind of translation pays attention to respecting and absorbing the achievements made by predecessors in Hegel's translation, taking its essence and using its dross. This seems easy, but in fact it needs a high vision. At present, some translators like to be unconventional, deliberately abandon some good translations and come up with some highly personal translations to show their originality (even the following names are translated strangely), which makes it more difficult for readers to understand. Mr. Liang is a "reformist" in terminology translation, and advocates "advancing along the road initiated by Mr. He and making improvements and revisions in some places". When revising, he also referred to the translations of other senior scholars. For example, the word Schein was originally translated as "virtual image" by Mr. He, and was translated as "image" by Mr. Liang. Another example is Mr. He's translation of Reflection. Mr. Liang agrees with this translation, but thinks that when expressing "ontological relationship" instead of "epistemological relationship", a translation method should be added, that is, "reflection". Another example is the word die schlechte Unendlichkeit, which used to be translated as "evil? Not good? Infinite ",Mr. Liang advocates changing it to monotonous infinity, which is obviously much better (but I think the word" reflection "has lost its original meaning, and it is better to translate it into" reflection ",which can also express the meaning of ontology; "Monotonicity" does conform to the meaning of infinite addition at the same level, but Hegel's original intention of using this word is more likely to emphasize its "simple" meaning. As for the translation of Sein, which is called the "great curse", Mr. Liang still "exists" according to any translation. I think this is at least a safe way at present.
From the point of view of academic research, one of the shortcomings that can be easily remedied in this kind of translation is the lack of translation title index of the whole book. Of course, there was no shortage of this in the past, but at present, the domestic academic research level seems to have higher requirements in this respect.
Mr. Liang is the reviewer of my first translation of Kant's Practical Anthropology in the translation of German philosophical documents. I remember how grateful and respectful I was when I received Mr. Liang's corrected translation and encouraging reply that year (1986). Mr. Liang's delicate and neat handwriting, including the words on the envelope, can almost be used as a model essay for "hard pen calligraphy", which surprised me deeply. This kind of word can only be written by a person with a very full heart. As a famous predecessor, Mr. Liang inspired me in translation skills, and more importantly, his serious attitude towards learning gave me an unforgettable demonstration.