A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Zhong Yong By Legge And Ku Hungming From The Perspective Of Postcolonial Translation Theory

In the late Qing Dynasty, China was tortured by both foreign invasions and domestic troubles as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. In such a time of national depression, Chinese cultural identity was almost close to be marginalized. Patriots desperately brought in the western technologies, hoping that they could help China pull through the difficulty. However, there were still negative consequences, such as the increased cultural deficit between west and China. Chinese cultural identity stayed in the risk of "being written"by the west. Different from most scholars at that time, Ku Hungming and Legge wanted to introduce the traditional and true Chinese culture to the west. Their translation works such as Higher Education, The Universal Order or Conduct of Life and The Discourses and Sayings of Confucius won many praises from western readers.The postcolonial translation theory enables us to study Ku Hungming and Legge’s translation from a whole new angle. This cutting-edge theory gives reasonable explanations to Ku and Legge’s translation, concerning the special social background of their time. It is the external conditions (power, politics, and ideology) that postcolonial translation theory mainly focus on. And based on which, this thesis would analyse the cause and effect of Ku and Legge’s translation and the strategies they had used. And it is hoped to find the unique functions that Ku and Legge’s translation works have to the construction of Chinese cultural identity and their implication to the research of contemporary translation of Chinese Classics.First, the target, questions and methods of the research are introduced; next, the emergence and development of the post-colonial translation theory and some famous works are reviewed; then, the dissertation analyzes Ku and Legge’s translations in linguistic, stylistic and cultural level respectively; lastly, based on this comparison, the paper discusses Ku and Legge’s translations from the perspective of post-colonial translation theory.Through the full and accurate material and the firm and meticulous analysis demonstration, the author found two new angles to the research of post-colonial translation study and, this finding could give certain implication to the future translation of Chinese classics.