Su Manshu's English Prof iciency Reexamined

In the history of translation in China, Su Manshu has been acclaimed as a rare language genius, proficient in Chinese, English, Japanese, French, and Sanskrit. However, this view of him seems to have been passed down from one biographer to another too easily, and needs to be looked at more closely. This paper seeks to judge how proficient Su actually was in English by examining his performance in his two most representative English-related works. The first is The Miserable World, which was published separately in 1904 after being serialized in The China National Gazette in 1903. Translated from an English version of Hugo's Les Misérables, this work can be used to evaluate Su's English comprehension. The other is an English preface written in 1909 for the anthology Voices of the Tide, a collection of some Chinese and English literary works both in the original and in translation. While the ＂Preface to Voices of the Tide＂ is superbly written, displaying an exquisite literary style that demonstrates a native speaker's profound grasp of the English language, The Miserable World features numerous misinterpretations that are attributable to the translator's failure to understand some basic English concepts. In order to make sense out of this contradiction, this paper looks at both Su's English learning career and the nature of his translation errors, and concludes that the highly fluent text of the Preface may probably have been polished by a native speaker of English. Finally, this paper concludes that Su had not fully mastered the English language: to handle the basic plot of an English novel might well have been within his power, but to give a more nuanced translation would have required a comprehension and linguistic skill that were beyond him. However, the purpose of this paper is not to deny Su's English ability but rather to clarify the less-than-accurate, exaggerated descriptions of his English proficiency in current biographies.