John Fryer’s Contribution to Standardization of Translated Scientific Terminology in Modern China

Abstract

John Fryer was a British missionary in the late Qing Dynasty who came to China and was employed by The Translation Department of Kiangnan Arsenal. He has been engaged in the translation work for over 28 years, not only having translated a great deal of Western scientific works into Chinese, but also having contributed greatly to the standardization of the scientific terminology translation. This paper first attempts to probe into Fryer’s scientific translation practice and his translation ideas, and then points out that Fryer’s major contributions to the standardization of the scientific terminology translation in Modern China are that the magazine Ko-chih-hui-pien he established had helped greatly with the popularization of modern scientific knowledge, that the book Mirroring the Origins of Chemistry he translated had paved the way for the term translation of modern chemical elements, and that various lists of bilingual technical terms he made, to a great degree, had standardized the translation of scientific terminology.