British scholar Herbert Spencer was a famous sociologist, biologist, psychologist, and ethical philosopher in western world during 19th and 20th century. Spencer’s books spread to China following the trend of ‘‘xi xue dong ji’’. For most part of his books, the path which they came to China was ‘‘translation’’. At the time, the translation business was very prosperous in modern China. A large number of missionaries, Chinese intellectuals, and students studying abroad took part in this ‘‘translation work’’. With regard to the translation of Spencer’s thought, the work was taken up primarily by students studying abroad in Japan, who represented ‘‘dong xue shi’’ translation, and the famous translators in China, Yan Fu, who represenetd ‘‘xi xue shi’’ translation. The students studying abroad in Japan performed translation of high speed and in guantity; however, the translated contents were rather scattered, resulted from the fact that most of them are the product of “re-translation”. Although the quantity of Yan Fu’s works was much smaller, the content was originated from original English works. These two different ways of translating caused problems for people in the late Qing Dynasty for reading and comprehending Herbert Spencer’s works. The first part of this article discusses the ‘‘dong xue shi’’ translations, and describes the circumstance in which Spencer’s thought spread to modern China along this path. The second part discusses Yan Fu’s translation from Spencer’s The Study of Sociology to Qun Xue I Yan. By portraying these two types of translation, I try to understand their different features and influences on the process of translating Herbert Spencer’s ideas, and further realize the meanings of these two paths in the history of modern Chinese translation.