Author ｜
Tsai Chu-ching
Abstract ｜
This essay discusses how the 19th and the early 20th century English-Chinese dictionaries helped standardize and normalize new terminologies of diverse academic disciplines and focuses in particular on the modernization process of the entry word “literature.” During the Shanghai Settlement in 1860s, the hunger to learn English began to spread, and as a result, the general public’s craving for English-Chinese dictionaries increased. Because of this, native Chinese literati gradually took over from foreign missionaries the work of compiling dictionaries to better meet Chinese users’ needs. After examining three different kinds of English-Chinese dictionaries compiled by missionaries, Japan literati, and Chinaliterati, the influence of Morrison and Lobscheid’s dictionaries is obvious.In 1908, An English-Chinese Standard Dictionary which was translated from Nuttall’s Standard Dictionary of the English Language, and compiled by Yen Hui-ching was published. It wasn’t until the publication of this dictionary that the compilation of English-Chinese dictionaries reached a more professional standard. An English-Chinese Standard Dictionary, which was compiled from English, American, Japanese,Chinese dictionaries, and textbooks, hence has given terminologies of diverse academic disciplines such as the word “literature” a more western “standard” definition.
keywords ｜
new term, literature, Robert Morrison, Wilhelm Lobscheid, P. Austin Nuttall, Yen Hui-ching (W. W. Yen), An English and Chinese Standard Dictionary