Studies On Sinologist David Hawkes In The Context Of Sino-British Literary Communication

The history of British Sinology is also a history of Sino-British communication. Sinologists, playing an intermediary role between the Sino-British literary and cultural communication, are an indispensable part of study in the fields of comparative literature and sinology, which could not be ignored. Especially, the professional sinologists who grow up after the Second World War in an age of Brithish Professional Sinology are the group of greatest value in research. As the bascial trend in the20th century is from "translation with an introduction" to "paying equal attention to translation and research", the emerge of professional sinologists helps to push forward such translation and research on a more specialized and academic course by interpreting Chinese literature and culture more rationally and precisely and disseminating them more comprehensively and much closer to the original as it is while compared with their predecessors.David Hawkes(1923-2009), a renowned British sinologist, has received specialized sinological training in Oxford, with his sinological career spanning the whole age of British Professional Sinology, is a representative among the first group of british professional sinologists. To comprehensively comb out and comment on his three main sinological activities i.e. sinologcial teaching, sinological research and sinological translation from a perspective of communication, is a study not only in favor of clear demonstration of Hawkes’sinological feaure, but also being of benefit to the overseas dissemination of Chinese literature and culuture as well as visualizing the Chinese culture in the eye of a westerner. Such case study of Hawkes in the context of communication, is still a blank field waiting to be explored in academic circles both at home and abroad.This dissertation, not only learns from the Sino-Western traditional academic research methods such as historical analysis, getting back to the source and integral description, but also makes full use of the latest theoretical achievements in sinology, translation, social and historical fields and the comparative literature such as the western new-historical theory, reception and communication theory, textual genetics, text close-reading, cross-cultural studies, cultural poetics and misreading or mis-interpretation in the cultural dissemination, and combining the corpus analysis to panoramically scan Hawkes’three main sinological activities throughout his whole life from the perspective of Sino-British literary communication, so as to precisely locate Hawkes in the history of British Sinology and clearly outline the developing process of Hawkes’sinological activities to enhance the Sino-British literary and cultural communication.With the background of sinological history, the thesis first tries to describe Hawkes’ more-than-sixty-year sinological career in an all-round way so as to locate him precisely in the history of British Sinology:Hawkes is undoubtedly one of the founders and backbones of British Professional Sinology. By reading and analyzing the firsthand materials written by Hawkes, such as academic papers, book reviews, translation books even prefaces or forewords written for his friends’works, this dissertation sorts out the main sinological viewpoints guiding Hawkes’s whole sinological activities. Hawkes frees himself from the close entanglement of the traditional British Sinology to religion, politics and economics, advocates that the task of Sinology is literature and the study of Chinese is the study of another culture, another world just as Michelet once called "une autre Europe au bout de l’Asie" and western researchers should present Chinese literature as a part of their total human heritage.While David Hawkes is holding the chair of professor of Chinese at Oxford and as the dean of Chinese Honour School, he has carried out a series of reforms of Oxford sinological teaching, establishing the age of Professional Sinology at Oxford and at the same time training and reserving a group of succeeding professional sinological talents who will be the new force for preserving and disseminating Chinese literature and culture in the second half of the20th century in Great Britain. His sinological research, based on the principle of humanism, explores Chuci, Hanfu, the poetry of Du Fu, the lyrics of Song dynasty, the Drama of Yuan dynasty, the novels of Ming&Qing Dynasties, the modern literature and so on, with a paradigm shift in research i.e.from the traditional outline of historical sites and traces as the predecessors to interpreting meanings of the academic literature in comparative ideology. With his profound cultivation in Sinology, Hawkes can be more rational and accurate in the meaningful interpretation of Chinese literary works and culture, which naturally contributes to better communication and reception of Chinese literary works in the West. Most of all, Hawkes’sinological translations, with faithful rendering and smooth style, realize the communication of Chinese literature and culture abroad in a true sense which are really the most important among all his sinological activities. With his hard labors as a translator, Chinese works Chuci, the poems of Du Fu, Hongloumeng, Pantaohui and Liuyichuanshu have all journeyed to the West. The thesis studies in detail Hawkes’above representative translations of Chinese literary works, by close reading sees through the translator’s eagerness and sincerity to communicate Chinese literature and culture to the West; with the materials rarely found before, it continues to probe into the position of these translations in the West and their influences in the Sino-British literary communication as well as summarizes the implications to translation practice; the last part is used to classify and analyze those unavoidable translation problems in Hawkes’translation. With the identity of a professional sinologist, Hawkes can make it without interference of politics, religion or ideological prejudice while translating, but can not assure himself that he could interprete Chinese literature and culture correctly without any mistakes. Such misreading, misinterpretation and mistranslation in language, culture or aesthetics, on the one hand are unavoidable phenomena in the process of Sino-Western literary and cultural communication, while on the other hand are just what we can improve and perfect where also the point of translation criticism lies. The discussion of problematic rendering in Hawkes’translations can be both of great benefit to the translation practice of later generation and of referential value to the revision of Hawkes’own sinological translations.