严复

He studied at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. After China's defeat by Japan in 1895 he translated Huxley's Evolution and Ethics as 《天演论》 (1898), which made 物竞天择, 'creatures compete and nature selects', and 适者生存, 'survival of the fittest', household words. He went on to translate Adam Smith, Mill and Montesquieu, and in 1912 became the first president of Peking University.

The three standards come from his preface to 《天演论》, where he wrote that translation is hard in three ways: 信, faithfulness, 达, clarity, and 雅, elegance. Chinese translators still argue over them.