A Systematic Study Of Fang Zhong’s Views On Translation

Fang Zhong (1902-1991) was a scholar-translator of international influence in the field of translation in 20th century. He realized the importance of translation in communication between cultures at an early time. Since the late 1930s, he had been engaged in translation practice for more than 40 years. His main works includes Qiao Sou Wen Ji(Collected Works of Geoffrey Chaucer) (1962), Li Cha San Shi (Richard Ⅲ) (1978), and Gleanings from Tao Yuan-ming (Prose & Poetry) (1984) (《陶渊明诗文选译》), etc.. Due to his rich experience in translating, Fang Zhong was listed as one of the "translators born in Jiangsu Province" (Zhou, Peng, Zhang,& Chen,2014:12).In recent years, an upsurge of studies on Mr. Fang Zhong has been set off as his achievements have had a profound impact on academic circles and foreign language education on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of Fang Zhong’s birthday. So far, such studies can be distributed into four classes in China, namely, studies on his translated works, his translation thoughts (with only two papers), the review of his academic achievements, and reminiscences of his personality and scholarship. Nonetheless, there is no systematical and comprehensive study on Mr. Fang’s thoughts on translation to date.The thesis will probe into Mr. Fang’s translation thoughts in aspects of translation purpose, reader awareness, the selection of source texts, qualifications of translator and the function of recitation in translation based on his translation experiences demonstrated in articles or prefaces of his translated works and evaluations from other scholars. As to translation strategies applied by Mr. Fang, the thesis adopts comparative study to the case study of his translation Gleanings from Tao Yuan-ming (Prose & Poetry) in aspects of language and culture. The thesis manages to study the translation thoughts and behavior of Fang Zhong so as to provide reference for other relevant researches or even effective dissemination of culture.The thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter One is the introduction to research background, objective of the study, research methodology of the thesis, and the layout of the thesis.Chapter Two is the background information of Fang Zhong comprising four sections, which are his life experience, academic studies, main achievements on translation, and last but not least, previous studies on Fang Zhong.Chapter Three provides an overall view of his translation thoughts concerning Gleanings from Tao Yuan-ming (Prose & Poetry). Corresponding analysis will be made in line with materials collected.Chapter Four focuses on translation strategies used by Mr. Fang in Gleanings from Tao Yuan-ming (Prose & Poetry) on lexical, sentence, and discourse levels. Strategies used in cultural aspects will also be discussed.Chapter Five is the conclusion of the thesis, which consists of major findings and more considerations.