On The Use Of Thick Translation By James Legge In His Rendering Of Da Xue

Taking The Great Learning in The Chinese Classics as a case study, this essay is anattempt to analyze the phenomenon of thick translation in Legge’s translation and the reasonsfor that phenomenon so as to explore the positive significance of thick translation in thetranslation of Chinese classics.In his cognominal essay, it is Appiah who first puts forward thick translation, or thickcontextualizaiton, which seeks with its annotations and its accompanying glosses to locate thetext in a rich cultural and linguistic context. It is also expected that by employing theapproach of thick translation the target readers can be provided with the real meaningsinvolved in-between the lines of the original text as well as abundant background information.The purpose of thick translation is to achieve an optimizing translation.As the first book of The Four Books, Da Xue or The Great Learning is of great value inphilosophy and constitutes the gateway through which beginners enter into the path of virtueand the order and sequence the ancients manifested in their education depend entirely on theexistence of Da Xue, with The Analects and The Book of Mencius coming next. Therefore,many scholars have devoted themselves to translating this masterpiece with different purposesbecause of its important role in Confucianism as well as in ancient education, among whomJames Legge is the most outstanding one. He spared no effort to make a systematicaltranslation of Chinese classics and finally published his The Chinese Classics, which hasattracted much attention from scholars both at home and abroad. Numerous scholars havenoticed the manifestation of thick translation in Legge’s translation, while few thoroughstudies in this respect have been made. In view of this, the author attempts to make a thoroughanalysis about the preface, prolegomena, original text, footnotes and indexes added by Legge, through which Legge expounded his translation motivation and principles, the author, versionand the historical status of the original text as well as those cultural conventions embodied inthe source text systematically. In addition, the author also investigates the reasons for thephenomenon of thick translation, indicating that translator’s motivation, readership, text typeof Da Xue, patronage as well as the linguistic differences all contribute to the production ofThe Great Learning.In a nutshell, through the analysis of the manifestation and function of thick translationin James Legge’s The Great Learning and the reasons for that phenomenon, this thesisattempts to demonstrate the feasibility of thick translation in the translation of Chineseclassics, expecting that it can facilitate the present retranslation of classical texts as well as thedissemination of Chinese culture to the world.