Socio-historical Interpretation of Yan Fu's Three-Character Translation Principle and His “Abnormal Translation” Strategy

Yan Fu insisted that translation conform to Faithfulness, Expressiveness, and Elegance while he practiced "abnormal translation", thus giving rise to years of debate over the relationship of his translation thought and practice.It is due to the fact that either the study of Yan Fu's translation thought has been undertaken without taking into account his translated version, or focus has been on relationship between a source text and a target text alone.The article argues that his Faithfulness and Expressiveness should be interpreted as end and means, respectively, though the previous views of them were also reasonable in a sense.Three-character translation principle embodies his ideal of translation, which is to approach the ultimate goal of translating, that is, being faithful to the source text, and the Chinese version of Evolution and Ethics is a product in the particular stage of socio-historical development.