Yan Fu
2 min readYan Fu（courtesy name：ji dao）（1854-1921）was a Chinese scholar，most famous for introducing Western thoughts，including Darwin’s ideas of“natural selection”and “survival of the fittest”，into China during the late 19th century.He was also involved in the Gong Zhe Shangshu movement.
He studied in the Naval Management School in Fuzhou，Fujian Province.From 1877-1879，he studied in the Navy Academy in Greenwich，England.Upon his return toChina，he was unable to pass the Imperial Civil Service Examination.It was not until after the Chinese defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War that Yan Fu became famous for his works of the time period.He is well-known for his translation of works such as Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics，Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations，and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.He was also greatly influenced by the works of Herbert Spencer.
The ideas of“natural selection”and“survival of the fittest”were introduced to Chinese readers through Huxley’s work；and were famously rendered as “wu jing tian ze ”and“shi zhe sheng cun”.The phrases have become proverbial in the Chinese language，but are often misunderstood as the synonyms of“merciless competition”.
He stated in his preface to Evolution and Ethics that“there are three difficulties in translation:faithfulness，understandability and elegance”.He never set that three difficulties as a general standard for translation，and didn’tmean that those three were independent of each other.However，since the publication of that work，“faithfulness，understandability and elegance”has been attributed to Yan Fu as a standard for any good translation，become a cliche in the Chineseacademic circle，and raised numerous debates and theses.Some scholars argue that the dictum came from Tytler.
