Western Missionaries' Legal Translation in China in the Early 19th Century-from the Perspective of Post-colonial Theory

Focusing on the western missionaries' legal translation in China in the Early 19th Century, the thesis selects two of the most representative texts of legal translation "Ta Tsing Leu Lee" and "wuche yunfu". The thesis first collects the related material of the discourse practice and holds a general analysis. And then based on post-colonialism, the thesis analyses and elaborates this translation behavior from the perspectives of Orientalism and time narrative of culture. From the perspective of post-colonialism, the key point of the early law translation by western missionaries in China in the Early 19th Century is not about cultural transmission, but about the ideology reflected by in. The author holds that during the early missionaries' legal translation, what's behind the transition of the text is a cultural superiority. With psychological superiority, these missionaries deliberately created a kind of exotic, ignorant and underdeveloped oriental image in the process of text transfer. This contempt attitude and salvation psychology has decided that they could not introduce Chinese culture with complete fairness and rationality. "Oriental" image has strengthened the psychological superiority of the west, consolidated the position of the western culture and oriental culture was further marginalized. It is the typical western centralism and superiority of the west that hides behind. And this kind of cultural superiority reflects and also caters to the practice of imperialism. In linear time chain of cultural evolution, Chinese culture was placed in the same chain of the cultural development in Europe. The original synchronic comparison between Chinese and western culture became diachronic with. China placed on some steps of development which was far thrown behind by Europe. As the culture of time is linear in the midst of an irreversible flow, the original upstream and downstream in the sense of cultural space was forced into the arriving sequence of culture in the sense of time and enlightening and being enlightened, rescuing and being rescued, ruling and being ruled in the sense of politics, providing evidence for legitimacy and legality of western colonial invasion. Thus, cultural discourse of the colonialism was linked with imperialism practice and the western missionaries' legal translation in the early 19th century China is also tainted with imperialism.