嚴復的翻譯思想借鑒中國古代文論和古代語言哲學的一些觀點，繼承並發展了中國古代佛經翻譯的經驗總結，觸及到了翻譯中幾乎所有最重要、最本質的問題，是一份極其寶貴的理論遺產。但以往的研究多套用西方翻譯理論的概念對它加以引申發揮。這樣的研究不可能準確清晰地描述出嚴復翻譯思想的獨特個性和理論價值。因此，本文試圖把它的三個核心概念「信達雅」放在中國古代翻譯理論、古代文論、古代語言哲學以及漢語文言的語境中加以辨析。

Yan Fu’s writings on translation, touching almost all the fundamental questions involved in translation, are valuable with peculiar theoretical significance. However, in spite of their heavy indebtedness to the cultural heritage of ancient China—the literary theories, the linguistic philosophy, and the translation ideas deriving from the practice of Buddhist rendition, they have often been most indiscriminately and most misleadingly interpreted in the terms of western translation theories.
As a result, such interpretations have only obscured Yan Fu’s ideas, rather than clarifying their specific theoretical value. Hence the present essay sets out to reexamine three of his central concepts—“xin”, “da”, and“ya”—in the contexts of those intellectual elements on which Yan Fu drew on.