Zhuangzi In Translation

This thesis attempts to perform a comparative study on two translated versions of Zhuangzi from the perspective of George Steiner's Hermeneutic translation mode, which, the author hopes, will provide some useful suggestions on the translation of Zhuangzi and ancient Chinese classics at large. As the great representative of Taoist classics and classic Chinese literature, Zhuangzi is noted for its bold vision, implicit nature, and unique expression. It is also those particular features of Zhuangzi that pose great obstacle to its translation. More exactly, the language of Zhuangzi has divorced from contemporary spoken language for almost two thousand years. Even peculiarly in Zhuangzi is that it deliberately distorts and impishly tampers with the conventions of classical Chinese itself. Therefore, to grasp the basic meaning of Zhuangzi is a stupendous task in its translation. Anyhow, in less than 100 years, Zhuangzi has been translated many times by different translators both home and abroad, which include James Legge, Feng Yulan etc. In this thesis, comparative study is made on two translated versions of Zhuangzi by Professor Wang Rongpei and the eminent American sinologist Victor H Mair, which is approached from the perspective of George Steiner's Hermeneutic translation mode. George Steiner is the English scholar who firstly and systematically applied Hermeneutical principles to translation studies. Traditional hermeneutics began with the interpretation of Bible. In the late eighteenth century, Schleiermacher outlined the first general hermeneutics. After a long time, the ontological hermeneutics was established by Martin Heidegger. At the beginning of 1960s, a more systematic modern philosophical hermeneutics was brought into existence by Gadamer. In his After Babel, George Steiner put forward his Hermeneutic translation mode. He held that the hermeneutic motion is the act of elicitation and appropriative transfer of meaning, which should be divided into four folds. The first is trust. He believed that the initative trust is an investment of belief. To some extent, the translator believes that the original text should be meaningful. Sometimes, the original texts are to be adverse texts. All the resistances and obstacles the original text brought to...