On The Xiang’er Commentary To Laozi And Bokenkamp’s English Translation:from The Perspective Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

As one of the significant classics in Chinese Daoism, the Xiang’er Commentary to Laozi possesses enormous research value in the history of Chinese Daoism. Different from other annotations to Laozi, or Dao De Jing, the Xiang’er Commentary to Laozi, is the only one which annotates the original work from a religious perspective. The English translation of Chinese Daoist classics have begun since the19th century. However, the Xiang’er Commentary to Laozi, one of the earliest Daoist Scriptures in history, has not been on the list yet. By the end of the20th century, American Sinologist Stephen R. Bokenkamp first translated this scripture into English in his monograph Early Daoist Scriptures. Thus, this earliest Daoist scripture was indeed for the first time demonstrated to the foreign audience completely.According to the Philosophical Hermeneutics, translation is a process of interpretation and understanding with historicity and subjectivity. Gadamer claims that translators are special readers. He proposed the concepts of historicity of understanding, fusion of horizon and effective history, which changed the perspective of the study of Hermeneutics from that of the authors to the readers. Historicity of understanding indicates that as special readers, the translators could only understand the text in his time and views subjectively and creatively; based on effective history theory, the meaning is historical and changes all the time, so there is not so-called perfect translation work in view of its certain historical backgrounds. Therefore, re-translation is of great importance and necessity.This thesis aims to probe into The Xiang’er Commentary to Laozi and Bokenkamp’s English version under the guidance of Philosophical Hermeneutics, targeting at analyzing the personification of "Dao" in the Xiang’er Commentary to Laozi based on Dao De Jing, and how the Xiang’er Commentary distorts its original classic basis for the purpose of Daoist Religion, and also how Bokenkamp deals with all of these in his translation; then studying four key notions (Gushen, Taiping, Changsheng and Jing) to conclude Bokenkamp’s translation strategies; finally, finding out the significance and influence of Bokenkamp’s translation in the world both at present and in the future.After thorough studies, it can be concluded that Bokenkamp selects different translation strategies—mainly embodied in two ways:applying Chinese phonetic mode and selecting synonymous substitutions in English in translating "Dao" and other four key notions, through which the translation are more accurate. On the contrary, other ways of distorting Dao De Jing like deletion of words, addition of words and change of words from the perspective of religion could not be realized in the translation because of cultural differences and languages’specificness and the effective history, which makes Bokenkmap’s translation with some flaws any way. Since Bokenkamp’s translation of the Xiang’er Commentary to Laozi is the first complete one, it is a great contribution with outstanding significance and influence on the world and the future learners.The present study elevates readers’understanding of Bokenkam’s translation of the Xiang’er Commentary to Laozi and enriches the translation studies of this early Daoist scripture, thus being of certain help to widely spreading of the Xiang’er Commentary to Laozi at the same time enhancing cultural communications between the East and the West in this field.