A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Tao Yuanming’s Poems From The Perspective Of Gadamer’s Hermeneutics

Tao Yuanming, also called Tao Qian, was a great poet in the East Jin Dynasty, who enjoys high reputation as the founder of Chinese pastoral poems. Inthe Southern Dynasties, Xiao Tong appreciated the literary value of his works while included them in《文选》(《昭明文选》and Zhong Rong spoke highly of him as the father of the reclusive poets. Since then Tao Yuanming has enjoyed high reputation. Moreover, there has been an independent discipline on Tao Yuanming called“陶学”With the cultural exchange between China and western countries, his works have been translated into English by several translators. The author chooses Fang Zhong’s and Wang Rongpei’s version respectively as study cases by employing Gadamer’s concepts of historicity of understanding and fusion of horizons. Their different features are due to the certain time that they live in and their unique understanding of the original text. Fang Zhong’s version is emotional and uses mixture of long sentence and short sentence pattern. Besides, there are some mistranslations in it. On the contrary, Wang Rongpei prefers long, well arranged and rhymed sentences and the language is plain.Gadamer thinks that translators are historically limited by their certain living background, a certain time. That is to say, they have historicity of understanding. Thus, in the process of understanding of the original text different, different translators will step into the horizon of text with their own horizons. At the same time, it is not possible for translators to get the meaning completely at once. So, an equal dialogue should be conducted between the text and the translators to achieve agreement, namely,"fusion of horizons" between the text and the translators after continuous negotiation and compromise. In addition, in the process of doing translation, the translators should take the readers’ horizon into consideration because the translated versions will be tested by the target language readers eventually. So, the two sides also need have dialogue to make agreement, namely "fusion of horizons" between the translators and the target language readers,In this thesis, the author discusses and analyzes the translations of his works from the perspective of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. As a theory concerned with understanding and interpretation, philosophical hermeneutics is closely related to translation. It provides a new perspective for translation studies.This thesis tries to make a detailed comparative study of two English versions of Tao Yuanming’s poetry respectively translated by Fang Zhong and Wang Rongpei on the basis of Gadamer’s hermeneutics.On the one hand, it makes analysis on different translations of the titles and allusions on the basis of "historicity of understanding" to show that translations made by the two different translators are under the influence of the certain historical background; on the other hand, it discusses the differences that exist in the translations of the images and reduplicative words on the basis of "fusion of horizons" to show that the differences between each version are resulted from the conflicts and compromises among the source text’s horizon, the translator’s horizon, and the target reader’s horizon. In addition, this thesis also reflects on the reasonable understanding and employment of the theory. Furthermore, it gives suggestions on integrating Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in analysis and assessment of translating Chinese poems into English.