My efforts will join those of earlier interpreters, may have some slight impact on the way the Shiji is read, and perhaps, in the very best case, may even provoke some discussion of comparative historiography, but Sima Qian’s book became a foundational text in Chinese civilization. Sima wrote a universal history, an account of the entire world (which to him was China and its neighbors) from earliest legendary times to his own age, and in doing so, he defined what it meant to be Chinese. Not only do standard surveys of Chinese history and historiography include a chapter on the Shiji, but such chapters also are common in surveys of Chinese literature and Chinese philosophy. In fact, I would argue that after Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, he virtually created the two earlier figures.
“我会尽力整理有关《史记》的早期译本，这可能会给读者对这本书的理解带来一定影响，造成和史料比较有关的一些争议，但司马迁的《史记》已经成为中华文明的奠基之作。司马迁的著作是一部通史，这本书囊括了一整个世界（包含司马迁所在的国家及其邻国），从神话时期一直记载到作者所生活的年代。《史记》不仅是中国古代史及史学史论著中不可或缺的一章，在文学史和哲学史也享有同样的地位。事实上，我认为司马迁是继孔子和秦始皇之后中华帝国文明的又一塑造者，因为他不仅撰写了有关前两者的权威传记，也为世人塑造了他们的形象。”

The Shiji almost presents itself as a book without an author. Obviously,Sima Qian had a role in the production of the text, but he deliberatelytries to minimize his contribution. He relies heavily on earlier documentary sources, which he often paraphrases or copies directly into his history, and preface he rarely offers explicit comments or interpretations. Even the Han dynasty biographies, which Sima was most likely to have written, have an impersonal quality, with generalizations and first-person asides seldom intruding into the narrative. Although most chapters do end with a paragraph or so of personal comments, clearly marked off by the phrase “The Eminent Grand Astrologer remarks,” these passages are brief, inconsistent, and frequently simply cite the judgments of others. In addition, the form of these personal comments is equivocal, for the term Eminent Grand Astrologer can refer to both Sima Qian and his father, Sima Tan, who also had some, rather unclear, role in the creation of the Shiji. The last chapter of the Shiji is ostensibly an autobiography of Sima Qian, but even there he devotes much
more space to the teachings of his father and Dong Zhongshu than to the sparse details of his own life. Throughout the Shiji, Sima Qian generally refuses to provide an original, narrative reconstruction of the past in his ownvoice, based on his own reading of the evidence, and to Western readers this is a serious deficit indeed.
“《史记》几乎是在刻意隐藏作者的痕迹。司马迁是本书的撰写者，但他却有意在书中弱化自己的存在感。他引用了大量古代文献资料，常常将它们直接摘抄进书中，并很少对这些引用的文献做出评价或者翻译。甚至连汉代人物的传记，也是司马迁记录最多的部分，也往往是不带主观色彩的，他很少在篇章中做出总结，或者以第一人称的视角进行评价。尽管大多数篇章的结尾带有一段结语，也就是标志性的‘太史公曰’，但此类文字往往较为简短，甚至前后矛盾，并且经常会简单引用别人的评价。此外，‘太史公‘的身份也经常模棱两可，既可以指司马迁的父亲司马谈，司马谈也参与了《史记》的部分创作，但究竟哪些是他做的篇章，已经很难辨识出来。《史记》的最后一篇显然是司马迁的自传，但即使是在这一篇里，他也用大量的文字记录父亲和董仲舒对他的教导，对自己的生平细节的记述却相对简略。在《史记》中，司马迁没有采用主观陈述的方式来还原过往，不对史料进行解释，在西方读者看来，这是相当遗憾的事情。”

开始我还没翻到译文，看到密密麻麻的英文都快疯了英语渣渣

读的时候真的觉得史记中阿迁在刻意隐藏自己，让人难以看透他的内心，可能他内心本来就很矛盾吧，或者这是一个史学家的操守，毕竟别的史书也是这样尽量客观。可是对于子长粉来说就不是一件好事了

虽然哈代对阿迁的理解可能还是存在一点偏颇之处（可能也是为了向西方史学界做一些善意的比较和提醒），但他的观点无疑还是能给我们中国读者一些启发。我们或许更应该开拓视野，拓宽信息渠道的来源，多做一些比较，警惕那些材料和论证缺失或者不足，情绪化输出的段子，不要被一些别有用心的势力给利用了。

另外，哈代还坚持用“The Grand Astrologer（大占星家） ”而不是西方史学界更常用的“the Grand Historian（大历史学家，太史公）”来称呼阿迁，这可能也是老爷子的一种严谨和倔强吧虽然阿迁看到他这么强扭自己的本意估计会哭笑不得（喂，老子就是要让后人记住我是史官啊！）。在文中，他更是吐槽阿迁“In the Shiji, by contrast, the historian is curiously absent. He does not offer many arguments or narratives in his own voice, and in fact it isnotoriously difficult to derive Sima’s opinions from his history（相反，在《史记》中，作者经常缺位，他发表的个人陈述或看法并不多，而且从他的史书中提取出他的个人观点更是臭名昭著的难搞）”，在读《史记》的一些篇章时，我们或许也很想吐槽这一点吧。

中国人的传统本来就是含蓄啊😱尤其是史书这种严谨的东西，怎么能写成报任安书那样呢最让我无语的是子长竟然成了大占星家文史星历是一家么