A Comparative Study Of English Translations On The Setting’s Name In Xi You Ji From The Perspective Of Translation Ethics

Xi You Ji is one of the four masterpieces in China literary history, the deep theme and the fantastic plots as well as distinct characters making Xi You Ji has a profound level in both China and abroad. It has drawn many literary readers and scholars from home and overseas to study and admire. The eighty-one adventures Tangseng and his pupils experienced are the most beautiful details in the novel. As the main part and the center of the book, they have been played a very significant role on reflecting the art and the author’s thoughts.There are three elements contained in a complete novel, namely, the character, the plots and the environment. The environment includes the natural environment and the society environment on one hand, and the time background of a story and the settings for particular incidents to take place on the other hand. In the novel, Tangseng and the pupils walked millions of thousands kilometers. They had different hardships in different places. These places include mountains, rivers and forests; countries and cities; palaces and castles; temples and the homes of ordinary people. The different settings and sites reflect the rationality on the structure of the novel and the deep realization and thinking on the real story of Xuanzang the author have. These settings relates tightly with the plot, the describing of the content, the betraying on the characters and their qualities, the presentation of religion and the political thoughts. Through the transformation between the setting and the novels, the plots have been developed and changed, and the connotative meaning of each novel and different qualities of different people have been reflected, so that the author’s aim and the theme of the novel will be presented. Besides, the naming on each kind of setting is the reflection of the author’s purpose, so does the naming of the settings. The naming and the setting for the places by the author not only take the background for the plots, but also can be reflected the special cultural implication contained in the settings. The pamphlet in the novel generalized every incident and the place for each adventure. With forty settings altogether, these settings are a representative for all the setting in the whole story. Recently, the Chinese literature and the English literature are few on studying the settings in Xi You Ji, but settings have been played a very important role on showing the main content and the cultural sense of the novel. Therefore, the author believes that it is important to a certain degree to make some study on the settings in Xi You Ji.The great influence on Xi You Ji at overseas attributes to the translations of it. No less than twenty kinds of translations have been come into being, including nine English versions.As a standard to judge the translation thoughts, the translation acts and the translation strategies and methods, translation ethics are drawing more and more attention from scholars in the translation domain. The studying range and the studying degree on translation ethics are being enlarged and deepen continually. Among the recent theories about translation ethics, the five modes of translation ethics proposed by Andrew Chesterman from Finland, are believed to have been not only inherited and developed the translation ethical theories of former scholars, but also offered a more broad view to study various translation practical activities and translation ideas. Although there are deficiencies and shortcomings consisted in the modes, they are still applied to the research of translated works.Therefore, the settings are selected from the pamphlet for the eighty adventures in the original as the research subject; Journey to the West translated by W.J.F. Jenner and The Journey to the West translated by Anthony C. Yu as the case translations; Chesterman’s ethics theories are adopted to add up, definite and categorize the translations on the settings’ names and hackle and identify in different types, so that to check which translation ethics model these translation methods have been conformed to respectively, it is hoped to derive that which methods are more suitable in translating the settings into English under the instruction of translation ethics models. Then, translation methods will be evaluated from the cultural view to see which one can convey the cultural implication contained in the settings themselves much more.