Abstract:

The sci-tech achievements made by ancient China are preeminent in the world contributing significantly to the development process of world history. Among translation activities related to science and technology over one thousand years in the past, the translation practices conducted under “National translation programs”, a kind of translation practices that is in the form of officials as well as the agencies or persons on behalf of the officials, have provided a crucial contribution to the exchange of sci-tech knowledge between ancient China with foreign nations and to the domestic development of science and technology. This research takes state translation programs as the theoretical perspective, science and technology translation activities in ancient China as a main investigation clue, official translation agencies as the description object, and knowledge interaction between ancient China and the west as a sub-observation, to examine the causes, historical facts and influences of China’s ancient national sci-tech translation practice. In this way, this research hopes to enrich the writing style and perspective of Chinese scientific and technological translation history and national translation programs history. In addition, the way of “learning from the past and using the accumulated successful method to achieve current goal” can serve as a case enlightenment and historical experience reference for the construction of the current national translation capacity and its subdivisions-national sci-tech translation capacity.

Key words: National Translation Programs (and its history), Sci-tech Translation (and its history), Official Translation Agency, Mutual knowledge translation and learning, National Translation Capacity