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Study On Ku Hungming's Translation Of LunYu From The Postcolonial Perspective

Posted on:2009-08-23Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:F Y YouFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360242492887Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The Analects of Confucius is one of the classic works of Confucianism, which records the views of Confucius and his disciples. It has deeply influenced Chinese intellectual thinking, politics, education and other aspects of culture and also had great impact on the world culture. Since the 16th century the Analects of Confucius has been translated into Western languages. According to the statistics there are about 40 translation versions. Among them the most distinguished are two versions translated by James Legge and Ku Hungming respectively.Ku Hungming changed the situation that the Christian missionaries, Western Sinologists monopolized the dissemination of the Confucianism and wrongly created the China's image. He grasped the discourse right to represent China and Chinese culture. Ku Hungming used the Western philosophy and the Western sayings to make annotations for Chinese traditional culture version. He adopted the domestication method.In the postcolonial context, translation is related to the power, ideology, political conflict and many other social factors. The domestication method is usually critiqued as a way for powerful culture to exert cultural hegemony over weaker culture and is regarded as the tool of cultural colonization, weakening the differential of the language and culture in the original context, distorting and moulding the dominated culture .At that time China was under the semi-colonized and semi-feudalized condition, and the state was under the control of the Western imperialists, while its culture was also colonized in some degree. The image of China disseminated by the Christian missionaries Western Sinologists, was stupid, absurd, backward. To correct the images of China and the Chinese people, Ku Hungming decided to retranslate the Confucianism classics, but he adopted the domestication translation method. Does it mean the yielding to the West hegemonic culture? Does the domestication mean the cultural colonization, or the foreignization amount to the resistance to the colonization?The thesis argues that: Ku Hungming adopted the domestication method in his translation, not meaning that he yielded to the Western hegemonic culture, instead that he intended to disseminate Chinese traditional culture and to improve China's status in the world. His translation motivation, purpose and the real effect of his translation activity all presented his anti-colonial spirit. In the postcolonial context, the domestication strategy also can become the sharp tool for the under-privilege nations to show their ideology and literature, to get the wide understanding and sympathy.A deduction approach is adopted to carry out the research. By putting the translation version back to the specific social, historical, political situations in which it was created , the author will research on the reasons of Ku Hungming's adopting this method in that power differential context. The functions of domestication and foreignization will be further discussed in the post colonial context.Besides the introduction and conclusion, the thesis is divided into five chapters.The introduction of the thesis consists of the motivation and significance of the research, methodology and structure of the thesis and arrangements of carrying out the research.Chapter one is a literature review on the translation of Lun Yu and on the research on Ku Hungming's translation activity.Chapter two is the elaboration of the theoretical basis of the thesis--Postcolonial theory. Chapter three is about the functions of domestication and foreignization strategies from the traditional perspective.Chapter four is the analysis on Ku Hungming's translation version of Lun Yu, including the backgrounds of his living times, his translation style, the analysis on his translation strategy, comments on his translation activities.Chapter five is the further discussion about the functions of domestication and foreignization in the postcolonial context.The conclusion part summarizes the thesis and makes suggestions for further study.
Keywords/Search Tags:Ku Hungming, post-colonialism, foreignization, domestication
PDF Full Text Request
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