Ma Jianzhong’s Proposal on Establishing a Translation Academy has its unique status among a myriad of translation thoughts in the Late Qing period. It differs from other proposals of “learning from the West” or “translating western books” but proposes setting up a specialized translation academy to train professional translators, which formulates a systematic training system and shapes a prototype of translation education thought. This paper starts with illustrating the emergence of modern state consciousness in the critical social context, expounds Ma’s state consciousness and its manifestation in his Proposal from three dimensions of origin, orientation and mechanism. It is concluded that the state consciousness in Ma’s Proposal may shed light on contemporary translation education as historical references from three perspectives, namely, the country-dedicated education direction, the ethics-evaluation standards and the state-dominated education institution.