Prestiti in cinese: Esempi dal "Huaxue cailiao zhong xi mingmu biao" 化學材料中西名目表

English missionary John Fryer (1839-1928) is one of the most important personages among protestant missionaries who visited China after the two Opium wars. He is mainly famous for having created a naming system for chemical elements in Chinese that is still used today. In this paper I will instead try to make a short analysis of the glossary of chemical terms edited by Fryer, the Huaxue cailiao Zhong Xi mingmu biao 化學材料中西名目表, particularly of some of the translation methods used in it. Through concrete examples and a quantitative analysis of two different translation choices, I will try to show how the Huaxue cailiao Zhong Xi mingmu biao can be considered an innovative and important step in the formation of modern Chinese scientific and technical lexicon, both from a methodological and linguistic point of view. I hope that this paper will cast a new light on John Fryer's translation and linguistic theories, fostering a deeper study of the formation of modern Chinese lexicon.