A Study Of Chalmers’ Philosophical Translation Of Dao De Jing

Dao De Jing is considered to be one of the most important components of Chinese traditional culture and the principal canon of Taoists. In a highly condensed yet poetic language, Dao De Jing explains its philosophical thought with profound connotations and it is the second book that is most frequently translated and spread most widely among all the cultural classics in the world after the Bible. The first English translation of Dao De Jing by John Chalmers(1825-1899) came into existence in Trubner, London, in 1868. Since then more than 160 English versions have followed suit, which inspires numerous researches around it and the worldwide impact of Dao De Jing can be closely related to its translation. However, most of the researches neglect the first Chalmers’ English version and misunderstand the interpretation of Chalmers’ version of Dao De Jing.Thus the thesis will conduct a comprehensive, systematic study of Chalmers’ English version of Dao De Jing. This thesis will study Chalmers’ version from three aspects: Chalmers’ philosophical features of translation, Chalmers’ translation of philosophical terminologies and Chalmers’ translation of the dialectics. The first chapter will analyze Chalmers’ English version from poetical factors, thick translation and fusion translation on the basis of Lefevere’s theory of rewriting, Appial’s theory of thick translation and the third space of Homi K. Bhabha. As a result, on the one hand, John Chalmers restored the essence of philosophical thought and poetical features of the original; on the other hand, he tried his best to find the equivalent expression in the native language by using the annotations. The second and third chapters emphasize the translation of the important philosophical words: “Dao” “Wu” “Nature” and philosophical “dialectic ideas”. John Chalmers’ translation grasps the philosophical essence of Dao De Jing, for instance, metaphysical ontology, governed by doing nothing and the opposites are paradoxical with correlative and independent, etc.In a word, although John Chalmers(1825-1899) was a missionary, he got rid of the Christian far-fetched translation and analyzed Dao De Jing from philosophical, political, dialectical aspects. John Chalmers’ translation of Dao De Jing opens up the new interpretation angle of Dao De Jing and provides resource for the following translation and the study of Dao De Jing.