A Hermeneutic Study On The Styles Of Four English Versions Of Li Sao

Qu Yuan, the greatest poet in the Warring States Period (approx.403 BC-221 BC), enjoys high reputation and status at home and abroad. His masterpiece Li Sao, like a unique flower in the magnificent garden of Chinese literature, is the crystallization of his great artistic accomplishment and profound thought and wisdom.With the increase of cultural exchange between China and western countries, Li Sao has been translated into English by more and more people. However, research about its English translations, especially about some excellent newly-translated works like Professor Zhuo Zhenying's version The Verse of Chu is far from enough. Meanwhile, the traditional researches are confined to the descriptive analysis about the words or sentences in translation, but less about translation styles of different versions. In view of this, the author will make a stylistic study about the four English versions by David Hawkes, Yang Xianyi, Xu Yuanchong and Zhuo Zhenying from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics.As a theory concerned about understanding and interpretation, philosophical hermeneutics is closely related to translation. On the one hand, it provides powerful theoretical support for the translation of Chinese classical works and brings a new angle of view for translation research; on the other hand, a large number of examples from the translation of Chinese classical works provide abundant evidence for scientificity of philosophical hermeneutics. As a long poem of culture encyclopedia, Li Sao's translation is very typical. Philosophical hermeneutics holds that translators will unavoidably be influenced by their original language, culture and translation views, which forms their "prejudice" or "horizon" and help create various versions with various styles. Translators must make innovation both in content and form as well as make reasonable understanding and interpretation on the basis of "shared horizons", their versions can be accepted by the public and exceed other versions.This thesis, based on the principles of philosophical hermeneutics "prejudice" and "fusion of horizons", studies the styles of the four English versions through a comparative analysis of translation of culture-loaded words, proper nouns, rhetorical sentences and poetic form, and makes a further discussion about what the reasons are behind these different styles so as to expound and prove the relationship between hermeneutics and translation style. The author also hopes to shed a hermeneutic light on further study about the styles of English translation of Li Sao and other classical works.