Contrast Of Two Versions Of The Analects Of Confucius By Ku Hung-ming And James Legge

Having been the essence of Confucianism, The Analects has long played a far-reaching role in cultural communication between China and the western countries. There are nearly more than 50 English translation versions which have been produced by westerners and Chinese scholars in the past 100 years, among which two versions are the most classical and representative: The Analects translated by Ku Hung-ming (1857-1928), who is a Chinese culture scholar educated in western countries and the other translated by James Legge (1815-1897), who is a famous British sinologist and missionary.This thesis focuses on a contrast study on their English versions under hermeneutics, explaining and exploring different features so as to contribute some constructive and creative thoughts to English translation of ancient classics. Hermeneutics has close connection with translation theory. The development of hermeneutics can be classified into four stages: classical hermeneutics, formal hermeneutics, ontology hermeneutics and Philosophy hermeneutics. Gadamer is representative of hermeneutics.This thesis comprises four chapters. The first chapter gives a brief introduction of The Analects of Confucius and its translations. The second chapter introduces hermeneutics and its development,Gadamer's theory of hermeneutics, the application status of hermeneutics theory in translation study, showing that Gadamer's three philosophy principles which are historical interpretation, fusion of horizons and effected history have great significance to English translation of The Analects. The third chapter makes a comparison between the two versions from three aspects, which are the comparison of language, translation method, translation strategy through analysis of example sentences of English Version of The Analects by James Legge and Ku Hung-ming. Through hermeneutics the final chapter goes further for deep explanation why these two versions by Ku Hung-ming and by Legge take on such different features in translation in the following aspects: life experience and academic background, sinology capability and bilingual competence, translation purpose and readers'response awareness.