| The Analects is an outstanding Chinese classic, thus its translation is an important part of the cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world. There are numerous English translations of The Analects. Meanwhile, the research works related to its English translations always emerge one after another. As a famous contemporary philosopher and sinologist, Roger T. Ames adopts the relevant ideas of Process Philosophy to interpret and translate this great Confucian classic. Process Philosophy advocates that the world is the process, and provides people with a new perspective to explain the structure of the real world. Furthermore, the relevant ideas of Process Philosophy to some extent agree with those of ancient Chinese philosophy, as ancient Chinese philosophers think that the only eternal thing is the change itself. The correlative thinking in ancient China makes the ancient Chinese a kind of “processual”and “event-oriented” language, emphasizing the process of an event, a situation, a feeling and so on.M. A. K. Halliday puts forward “Process View”, that is, to use language to express people’s various experiences. And “Process View” is mainly embodied in “Transitivity”theory, which as a semantic system divides things people see, hear and do into six“processes”: material process, mental process, relational process, verbal process,behavioral process and existential process. These six “processes” are mainly used to describe and analyze clauses.This thesis takes Ames’ English translation of The Analects of Confucius as research object, and introduces Halliday’s Transitivity theory to establish a more comprehensive analytical framework: the ideas of Process Philosophy ' the Process View of language ' the six process types of clause, then analyzes the clauses of philosophical terminology in Ames’ translation from the perspective of Transitivity theory, for instance, the clause of “ren( 仁)”, the clause of “li(礼)”, the clause of“zhong(忠)”, the clause of “xin(信)”, the clause of “da(达)” and so forth. And the followings questions are mainly explored. First, as there exist many translations of The Analects, what are prominent features of Ames’ translation when compared with othertranslations? Second, as Ames firmly believes in Process Philosophy, how are the relevant ideas reflected in his translation of The Analects of Confucius? Third, as Transitivity theory focuses on the expression of language, how to apply this theory into analyzing the clauses of philosophical terminology in Ames’ translation?In this thesis, three research methods are used. The first is the method of literature research. Many materials about the translations of The Analects, and some about Process Philosophy and Transitivity theory are searched and collected. The second is the method of empirical research. Many examples in Ames’ translation are provided to prove the existence of Process Philosophy in his version. The third is the method of comparative analysis. The clauses of philosophical terminology in Ames’ translation are compared with those in other translations of The Analects, thus highlighting the uniqueness of Ames’ translation.Through this research, we get some findings as follows. First, the ideas of Process Philosophy are not only manifested in the choices of words, but also reflected in the adoption of clauses, and the relevant ideas run through Ames’ translation of The Analects of Confucius. Second, Ames makes extensive use of dynamic clauses to translate philosophical terms in The Analects of Confucius, and the clauses of material process are most common. Third, Process Philosophy can also be applied to guide the English translation of other Chinese classics because of its certain connections with ancient Chinese philosophy. However, some limitations and shortcomings still exist.The thesis is mainly a theoretically exploratory research. Thus some further researches on Ames’ translation of The Analects of Confucius are still needed. |
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