274 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



translate. If we turn to one of the chinese titles already quoted, 

 we find that the same characters are interpreted by different scholars 

 in one case, to mean "Antiquarian Researches" and in another to 

 read " General Examination of Records and Scholars." 



In the January number of the Atlantic Monthly there is an article 

 entitled "Secret Annals of the Manchu Court," contributed by two 

 well known English sinologues, Messrs. Backhouse and Bland. In this 

 article they quote the title of a work, as "Reminiscences of a Time 

 of Suspicion and Panic." A foot-note announces that the literal 

 translation of this title is "Monkey-like Suspicions and Panic at the 

 Cry of a Bird." Periphrasis of this sort may in a general way be 

 typical, but such a wide variation as this from the literal must be 

 uncommon, and is introduced merely to show one of the difficulties 

 met by the translator. 



We have seen that Chaudoir says that copper plates were first 

 used by the Mongols in 1277. Saburo, writing about the Mongol 

 notes says: "At first the printing machines were made of wood, but 

 in the 13th year [1276] it [sic] was replaced by machines made of copper 

 or brass." It is to be presumed that the wooden printing machines 

 of Saburo were the wood cuts from which the notes were printed, 

 while the copper machines were the plates which we have learned 

 elsewhere were introduced by the Mongols about this time. 



It is stated that Edkins the author of "Banking and Prices in 

 China," was called upon by Sir Robert Hart to translate into chinese 

 a regulation concerning goods passing over the bar at the mouth of a 

 river. He effected the translation, but made use of the chinese 

 character for bar which is associated with cocktails, thus putting in 

 force a customs regulation on goods of quite another character from 

 what was intended. 



These illustrations bring fairly before us the obstacles encountered 

 by one who seeks to render in English an equivalent for sentences 

 expressed by chinese characters, whether arising from mentality, from 

 the necessity for periphrastic rendering, from lack of acute perceptive 

 faculties or from deficiency of analytical capacity. 



Still another obvious difficulty lies in the records themselves. Some 

 of these chinese histories upon which we rely were written hundreds 

 of years ago and they in turn were based upon records and official 

 documents, many of them dating back several centuries before the 

 day of the historians. Now, it would be unreasonable to expect 

 to find among these officials and historians, experts so trained in the 

 analysis of events as to seize in their narrative, upon the exact points 



