The development of scientific text translations in China in the early modern and modern period (1644-1911)

Language is a strong reflection of culture. Therefore, the phenomenon of translation is the totality of oral and written transmissions that take place not only between languages but also between cultures. China is one of the countries that intensively reflects its long history and culture in its language. Looking at Chinese translation history, three important translation periods stand out in this country. The first period began with the translation of religious texts with the arrival of Buddhism in China. The second period continued with the efforts of Jesuit missionaries to spread Catholicism in the 16th and 17th centuries. In this period, scientific texts were translated in addition to religious texts. The third period consists mainly of the translation of Western science in the 19th and 20th centuries. So, it is considered that the process of Westernization/modernization started in the country. Using the word "zhongguo (中国)", which stands for the central country, the Chinese for many years declared themselves "the only nation under heaven", their emperor "the son of heaven", and used the term "barbarian" to mean "foreign" for non-Chinese. The country -that claims to be the only nation-, has also closed itself to foreigners and their ideas. The weakening of the government over time and heavy defeats in wars forced the country to open up to the outside world. In this process, China found it appropriate to combine Western science with its own traditional values and benefit from it. In other words, China's modernization motto is "Zhongti Xiyong (中体西用)", which means "Chinese learning as substance, Western learning for application." Thus, in the early modern and modern periods (1644-1911), there were advanced developments in scientific research and teaching in China. New researches led to re-examine old informations, and the Chinese made the claim of "Xixue Zhongyuan (西学中源)", which states that science is of Chinese origin, to spread Western learning for one period and defend Chinese learning in the next period. The purpose of this study is to investigate the origin of modern science and the assertion "西学中源" through the history of translation in China. To this end, the development of scientific text translations in China was examined using information from printed and online books, dissertations, databases and open sources on the subject of the study. In this direction, it was found that China has begun to modernize science through translation and accept the West without losing its essence in a certain framework, and in fact "西学中源" with the idea of claiming that Western science is accepted by its own traditionalist people.