编订名词馆与《数学中英名词对照表》的编订

编订名词馆是清末学部负责统一各学科名词的机构。在数学名词方面,该馆统一了算学、代数、形学、平三角、弧三角、解析形学等类名词约1000个,将其编订为《数学中英名词对照表》。编订名词馆统一数学名词的活动开创了中国官方统一数学名词的先河,这一活动所遵循的原则是:有选择地采用旧译词;常发掘雅驯的古字来另译新名;基本不直接采用日译词。尽管由于日译词涌入并流行以及白话文普及对文言文的冲击等原因,具有严译风格的雅驯译词后来被淘汰,但《数学中英名词对照表》中“仍从旧译”的大部分数学名词留存至今,对后来中国的数学传播起到积极作用。

The Bureau of Terminology and the Compilation of The Chinese-English Term List for Mathematics

The Bureau of Terminology was an institution of the Ministry of Education to unify the terms of all subjects in the late Qing Dynasty. In the aspect of mathematical terms, the Bureau certified about 1000 terms that covered arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, spherical trigonometry and analytic geometry, and compiled these terms into The Chinese-English Term List for Mathematics. The activity of the Bureau created a precedent in unification of mathematical terms by official in China, which took the following principles: selectively using old translated names; usually using elegance ancient characters to translate new names; almost not directly using Japanese translations. Because of the influx and popular of Japanese translations, the vernacular's popularity and its impact on classical Chinese, and some other reasons, a lot of terms translated based on elegance ancient characters have been eliminated later. However, most terms using old translations are retained till now and played a positive role in the dissemination of mathematics in China.