| In recent years, with China’s economic development, China has been paying more and more attention to construction of its soft strength and foreign cultural exchanges, and the world is also more eager to know about China. Translation, especially C-E translation, as a medium of exchanges between China and the English speaking countries and regions, has played an important role in promoting China’s international cultural communication with the outside world. The Chinese cultural classics are one of the carriers of the traditional Chinese values and beliefs and Lun Yu is a Confucian classic work, whose translation into foreign languages is conducive to spread the traditional Chinese thoughts and culture to the world. The translation of Lun Yu into English has been conducted for more than300years, and scholarly research of the English translation of Lun Yu has become an important project in the field of translation studies of China.Compensation in translation has been conducted in translating practice since long ago, yet the history of researching translation compensation is very short. The different language mechanisms between the source language and the target language and their difference in culture cause translation compensation as an essential feature of the translating process. Cultural differences in poetics, patronage, and ideology have resulted in more or less difference in the ways of making translation compensation on the part of different translators in practices. Through studying different translations of the same original text with regard to their difference in compensation, we can better understand the embodiment of translation compensation, the features of the translating process, the translators’consideration of the target readers and their culture, and the cultural factors which influence such considerations, and meanwhile, such research efforts will benefit explorations in translating practices. Therefore, translation-based research of compensation is of academic value and practical significance.This research project is an attempt to take the three English contemporary translations of Lun Yu as its object of study, which are Yang Bojun&D. C. Lau’s version (2008), Lin Wusun’s version (2010) and Song Deli’s version (2010). The key research questions are:what are the similarities and dissimilarities among the three translations in translation compensation? How are they interpreted or explained from the perspective of the cultural translation theory? Methodologically, drawing on the previous relevant research achievements and the cultural translation theory, this study will, besides the literature research method, apply the method of comparative analysis of texts and the data thus obtained will undergo theoretical analysis on the basis of the relevant theory. The research procedure is:firstly the concept of translation compensation will be analyzed on the basis of previous research results, especially the definition of translation compensation informed by the cultural translation theory, and thereby a working classification is put forward. Secondly, the three English translations are analyzed so that their compensation phenomena can be described and characterized, highlighting their similarities and dissimilarities. Thirdly, the similarities and dissimilarities, especially the latter, are discussed from the perspective of the cultural translation theory.The three English translations were analyzed on the sentence and the text basis with regard to translation compensation, and the results of analysis were presented statistically. The main findings of the study include:in three English versions of Lun Yu, there exist some similarities and dissimilarities in compensation. The three English versions of Lun Yu all involve a large amount of textual compensation on the sentence level and on the textual level, and para-textual compensation. With regard to the compensation on the sentence and text levels, which is divided into conceptual compensation, structural compensation and stylistic compensation, Lin Wusun’s translation uses far more than the other two, which are similar. Of the three kinds of compensation methods, the conceptual compensation in three English versions is the most. Secondary in number to conceptual compensation, the three versions all adopt a large number of structural compensation devices. The stylistic compensation is the least used in the three versions by the three translators. On the whole, Lin’s translation is more concise and moderate in the sentence length, Lau’s translation is more accurate, easy-going, and academic to the detriment of its smoothness to read, and Song’s translation, which is un-paragraphed, is terse without losing accuracy. On the para-textual level, Lin’s translation is quite different from the other two, which are also similar. Lin’s version adds far more para-textual compensation elements including pre-text introduction, pre-chapter introduction, and footnotes, in his translation to explain Confucius’thought, while Yang Bojun&D. C. Lau’s version and Song Deli’s version have few para-textual compensation elements. The research results, especially the possible causes of their dissimilarities are analyzed from the perspective of the cultural translation theory in general and from the poetics and patronage in particular. |
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