A Comparative Study Of The Two Versions Of Lunyu From Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

Lunyu is the primary ideological classic of Confucius, the founder of Confucianism.Lunyu has introduced us the knowledge of ideology, culture, education, philosophy,religion etc. in Spring and Autumn Period. The translation of Lunyu is of greatimportance in culture exchange for the West and the East. The first translation came intobeing in1687, in Latin. In the following several hundred years, tens of translations gotpublished. The translators are included Chinese scholars, missionaries and sinologists.Due to the quantities of translations, Chinese culture is successfully transmitted to theWest. Meanwhile, they are popular with the western readers. In the thesis, the authorchooses two representative translations. One is translated by the reputational sinologistArthur Waley, who is called “the authority in Sinology and the Master in translation”.After the first publication of the Analects of Confucius in1938, his translation has beenrepeatedly republished for many times. The other translation comes from the greattranslator Xun Yuanchong, Xu was awarded “the Lifetime Achievement Award inTranslation” in2010. The two translations are from different translators, belonging toEast and West, of different ages. The thesis adopts reception aesthetics producing in1960s. The theory turns the study focus from the study of the author and the text to thestudy of the works and the reader to stress the importance of the readers. The thesiscontrasts the rhetorical devices, key words and special sentence patterns from aspects ofhorizon of expectation, indeterminacy, fusion of horizons and the aesthetic distancepointing out the target readers of the translation should always be considered and thetranslation practice should be carried according to the target readers’ reception and cognition. To translate a work according to the readers reception levels can we catch thepsychological features of the target readers making the translation easily accepted by thetarget readers. Finally the goal of transmitting the translation Chinese cultures will beachieved. The research objective is the acceptance level of the two translations for thetarget readers. Through the methods of reading, sorting and refining related resources tofind the acceptance level of the target readers. Through the research, the author hopes toattract the attention of scholars to Lunyu and its translations.