A Comparative Study Of Four English Versions Of Shangshu

Shangshu, one of Wujing, or the Five Classics, is the most ancient Chinese historical works and has been exerting far-reaching influence on the development of historical studies and literature in China.This paper is a comparative study of four representative English versions of Shangshu by the Scottish missionary sinologist James Legge, British missionary diplomat Walter Henry Medhurst, Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren, and contemporary Chinese translator Luo Zhiye. Based on translational theories related with hermeneutics, foreignization and domestication, the analysis is conducted from both linguistic and cultural perspectives in search of different solutions and strategies for translators to cope with various problems after evaluating loss and gain, strong points and shortcomings of the translations. Linguistically, lexical analysis and syntactical analysis are presented by way of exemplification. The former research falls into three parts:the handling of diachronic changes of words, use of Tongjiazi in the text and polysemy of characters; the latter involves translators’ contextual decipherment and semantic pause-making. Any operational mistakes related with the above may lead to totally erroneous translations. Cultural studies of this paper focus on cultural-loaded terms related with numbers, official titles, geographical names, wares, customs and etiquette. For the terms which can be well accepted by readers through metaphrase, literal translation is recommended to make the translated text smooth; for the terms that may be confusing to target readers, paraphrasing could be a good choice; for words that have no equivalent in the receptor culture and are hard to explain, transliteration with footnotes are suggested in order to preserve the cultural images of the original text.