| Ethics maintains social order and restrains people’s behavior in theircommunication. Translation, as a kind of cross-cultural activity, definitely needs therestriction of ethics to ensure its smoothness. Cultural exchanges are increasing inglobalization era. As an important step in our culture’s “going out†strategy,translating Chinese classics into English needs the guidance of translation ethics more.However few scholars have done their researches on translating Chinese classics intoEnglish from the perspective of translation ethics, which becomes the researchbackground and significance of this study.Xixiang Ji, written by dramatist Wang Shifu in Yuan dynasty, is one of therepresentatives of ancient Chinese dramas. Because of its unique artistic charm, it hasbeen translated into English for many times. Two highly evaluated but rarely studiedversions of Xixiang Ji: The Romance of the Western Chamber (1936) translated by S.I.Hsiung and The Story of the Western Wing (1995) translated by Stephen H.West andWilt L.Idema are compared in this study.Four models of translation ethics proposed by Chesterman: ethics ofrepresentation, ethics of service, ethics of communication and norm-based ethics areadopted by this study as its theoretical framework. By taking the contrastive anddescriptive methodologies, this study hopes to find out the influence these fourmodels of translation ethics have on translators’ strategies and the reading effectcorrespondingly.Firstly, based on the ethics of representation, this study compares the twoversions in their way of representing the source culture, the style and the stage effect.Then, based on the ethics of service, this study compares the services these twoversions offer to readers in their translation of culture-specific words, idioms andallusions. Last, based on the ethics of communication and norm-based ethics, thisstudy compares the two versions in their promotion of cultural communication,satisfaction with target readers’ expectations and translators’ professional qualities.This study comes to the conclusion that S.I. Hsiung mainly uses the strategy ofdomestication in obeying translation ethics. In dealing with cultural differences, he uses the strategy of paraphrasing more. This makes his translation closer to targetreaders while weaker in representing the source culture. Stephen H. West and WiltL.Idema mainly use the strategy of foreignization in obeying translation ethics. Theyuse the strategies of literal translation with explanatory notes more, which make theirtranslation better in keeping the foreignness of source culture and satisfying readers’expectations. Though taking different strategies, all three translators of Xixiang Jihave shown their professionalism and obeyed ethics in their works.Based on the experience of the two English versions of Xixiang Ji, this studyoffers some suggestions on translating Chinese classics into English in the light oftranslation ethics, which are faithful representation of the source culture, service fortarget readers’ expectations, promotion of cultural communication, enhancement ofthe cooperation between agents and institutions. This study hopes that thesesuggestions will help with the development of translation studies and the transmissionof our Chinese culture to the world. |
