A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of The Art Of War From The Perspective Of Gadamer's Hermeneutis

The Art of War is the earliest military treatise on strategies and tactics in domestic and international military history. Its abundant military theories and profound philosophical ideas have attracted universal attention among the military men, politicians and well-known scholars in and outside China. Therefore, based on her interest in its English versions, the author of the thesis will make a comparative study of its two English versions translated by Samuel Griffith and Chen Bingfu from the perspective of Gadamer's hermeneutics.Both English versions have great influence on their own fields and they have been used as compulsory textbooks in many countries. Griffith and Chen reinterpret The Art of War from modern military science and business management respectively, so the author chooses their versions as study cases. Two versions have different features due to the translators' various life experience, thinking pattern and translation purpose. Although the language of Griffith's version is succinct with short sentences, there are a lot of errors and pretermissions in it. On the contrary, Chen is expert in long sentences, the structure is well arranged, the logic is clear and the language is plain.Gadamer thinks that understanding is at the same time an interpretation, and understanding runs through the whole process of interpretation. As the subject and object of translating process, the translator and the text exist historically. The translator is bound to bring his prejudice to the text when he understands the original text. Consequently the translation may more or less deviate from the original text.In the process of translation, the translator's horizon has been enlarged by fusing with the horizon of previous English versions, the text's horizon and the horizon of target readers in the forms of notes, footnotes and preface. By various fusions, the messages that the target readers have accepted are not the same with the original one. But due to the existence of common horizon, translators in different eras share the similar understanding of the text.Principle of effective-history requires the translator must understand the text from his specific situation and apply it to his familiar situation. Therefore, the meaning of the text is always beyond its original author, and new meaning is excavated constantly by different translators according to different needs of their eras.Gadamer's hermeneutics does not provide methodological guidance for the translation practice but gives philosophical insight into the process of understanding and interpretation, which provides us with a new angle on translation study. Therefore, Gadamer's three principles explain well the reasons of differences between the two English versions, which is of great significance to further studies on translation of our splendid classics.