On The Dialogic Nature Of Translation: How To Translate Philosophical Terms In The Analects Of Confucius

Influenced by the theoretical ideas introduced by the concept of "cultural turn", this thesis aims to address the dialogic nature of translation. Translation could be arguably viewed as a great dialogue between the source culture and target culture concerned where two voices instead of one, or even heteroglossia are heard on the one hand, and microdialogues between the author, the translator and the target reader on the other. To keep in line with this idea, this thesis, mainly drawing upon the dialogic theory of Bakhtin and Kwame Anthony Appiah's thick translation, makes a tentative study of the translation of culturally-loaded philosophical terms in The Analects of Confucius in the context of globalization featuring multiculturalism. In order to give a more substantial presentation of the Author's research results, there will be a case study on the philosophical terms of The Analects, such as "天" and "礼", along with a discussion about the question "How to introduce Chinese classical philosophy to the world." To conclude, having taken the text type, the canonical status of the source-text and the Skopos into account and acknowledged that foreignization is the only translation strategy for this kind of philosophical terms, the author of the thesis advocates thick translation to render the said terms in The Analects that enjoys a canonical status in the cultural history of China.