有关严复的翻译研究历来是翻译界备受关注的课题。尽管国内关于严复的研究成果已经数不胜数，但是却很少有研究提及严复于1906-1907年刊登在《寰球中国学生报》上的《美术通诠》三篇译文，这无疑是国内严复研究的一大缺陷。本文立足《美术通诠》，通过理论分析和文本分析的方法，对《美术通诠》诞生的社会背景和严复的个人动机进行了深入考察，并对《美术通诠》和其它译著进行了详细的文本分析，探究严复在翻译实践中是如何落实“信达雅”这一翻译标准的。翻译研究领域的文化转向开启了描述性翻译研究的大门。作为这一文化转向的开端，佐哈的多元系统理论为国内学者研究清末至五四时期的翻译活动提供了一个新的维度。然而，佐哈的多元化系统存在着缺陷和不足，并未考虑文学系统外的社会因素对翻译过程所产生的影响。因此，本文的理论框架同时结合了安德雷•利夫威尔的操纵派理论，对译者意识形态以及诗学对译文的影响进行了进一步探讨。《美术通诠》的原文为英国作家William Basil Worsfold的著作 Judgment in Literature (1900)。严复故意将书名译为《美术通诠》，反映了他旨在力图改造中国传统美术观，引进西方现代艺术概念。因此，本文在理论分析部分回归到中国近代美术的诞生阶段——清末民初时期，分析了以康有为、梁启超、蔡元培、王国维和严复为代表的一系列思想家的译著活动对中国传统美学系统所带来的冲击，使中国传统审美意识摆脱封建儒家思想的控制，进而迎来了中国现代艺术的逐步确立。文本分析部分主要从书名翻译、人名地名翻译以及《美术通诠》的译文文本分析这三方面入手，以《美术通诠》为主要研究对象，同时也涉及了严复的其他译著，研究严复的翻译手法和特色。研究发现，尽管严复的翻译态度一直以“一名之立，旬月踟蹰”著称，但实际上他对于人名地名翻译并不是很在意——许多人名地名在不同译著中的翻译各不相同，这一点在以往的翻译研究中很少被学者所提出。最后，本文通过对比原文和译文的语言特征，对《美术通诠》进行了详细的文本研究，对严复的“信达雅”翻译思想进行了进一步的阐释。
Translation studies of Yan Fu have always drawn Chinese scholar’s attention. Despite that the research achievement of studies of Yan Fu is beyond count, few of them mentioned his translation Meishu Tongquan, which was published on Global Chinese Students' Newspaper during 1906-1907. The three essays of translation haven't been paid much attention by domestic scholars so far yet. For this reason, this paper gives a theoretical analysis to probe into the social background and personal motivation of the birth of Meishu Tongquan, and provides a close textual analysis to find Yan Fu's translation strategies and features by comparing the source text and translated text.The cultural turn in the field of translation studies opens the door for descriptive translation studies. Zohar's polysystem provides a new dimension for Chinese scholars to study the translation activities during late Qing Dynasty to early Republican China. However, Zohar's theory has deficiency in that it does not take non-literary systems into consideration. Therefore, this paper also brings in Andre Lefevere's manipulation theory to study the influence of the translator's ideology and poetics over the translation. Meishu Tongquan was translated from William Basil Worsfold's Judgment in Literature (1900). It is obvious that Yan Fu deliberately translated the book's name as Meishu Tongquan, aiming to transform the traditional Chinese artistic concept and introduce western modern concept of art. Thus, this paper traces back to the beginning of Chinese modern art, analyzing the impact of the translation activities of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Cai Yuanpei, Wang Guowei, Yan Fu and so on to the traditional Chinese aesthetic consciousness. Their activities played an important role in releasing Chinese art from the control of feudal Confucianism and the establishment of Chinese modern art. The textual analysis of Meishu Tongquan as well as Yan Fu's other translated works is approached from three aspects, namely, the translation of book's titles, people's name and geographic names, and a close linguistic study of Meishu Tongquan. As the study indicates, although Yan Fu's scrupulous attitude towards translation, as he said, "一名之立，旬月踟蹰", is widely known, he didn’t pay much attention to the translation of people's names and geographic names. Many people's names and geographic names were translated differently in Yan Fu's different works, which has seldom been mentioned in previous studies. In the end, the paper gives a close textual analysis between the source text and Meishu Tongquan which helps to further interpret Yan Fu's "Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance".
