Lin Shu

• Order — ts • Altname — Qinnan • C2 — 琴南 • P2 — Qínnán • W2 — Ch'in2-nan2 • Illustration — Lin Shu

Lin was born in Min County (now Fuzhou City) in Fujian Province, and died in Beijing. He was born into a poor family. However, he enjoyed reading Chinese books and worked hard at assimilating them. In 1882 he was granted the title of Juren, given to scholars who successfully passed the imperial examination at the provincial level. The young Lin Shu held progressive views and believed that China should learn from Western nations in order that the country might advance.

In 1897 Lin's wife died. His friend Wang Shouchang (王壽昌) (1864–1926), who had studied in France and hoped to distract Lin from his bereavement, suggested that together they translate into Chinese Alexandre Dumas's La Dame aux Camélias. Wang Shouchang interpreted the story for Lin, who rendered it into Chinese. The translation was published in 1899 and was an immediate success. Progressive intellectuals realized that the effect of translated literature on the public could be exploited for their reform agenda. In Lin Shu's time, many scholars of bourgeois inclination, such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, engaged in translating literary works and political novels, with a view to promoting bourgeois reforms. Lin Shu is also known widely as a guwenjia (古文家 master of ancient-style prose), which also casts him as an anchor of the traditionalist cultural politics. Lin Shu used classical Chinese in the translation of novels in an attempt to bridge the gap between classical Chinese and Western literary languages. On the one hand, he strengthened the narrative function of classical Chinese to adapt itself to a realistic description; on the other hand, he tried to make his translations more succinct than the original by simplification to fit the habit of the Chinese readers. As a famous translator, Lin Shu has used his imagination to communicate with the invisible text and collaborate with the foreign authors. Lin describes, in his translator's preface to Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop, how he worked on his translations: