A Hermeneutic Study On The Wisdom Of Confucius By Lin Yutang

Translation can not go without interpretation.As for literary translation,this is especially the case.Since the 1970s,translation turn has greatly expanded the domain of interpretation and the focus of translation studies has accordingly changed from how to translate into what to translate and why to translate.As one of the prestigious translation theorists of that period,George Steiner probed the links between language and culture and put forward the "hermeneutic motion" on basis of hermeneutics to guide the translation process and explore the essence of translation.He views translation more an art and a process of understanding and interpretation than science,meanwhile he insists that favorable translations are always balanced,which provides a span-new perspective to describe the literary translation phenomena and monitor translation process.Lin Yutang,an outstanding person dedicating to the cultural intercourse between the east and the west,has his own idea about translation.He argues that translation is art and translators should take their work as an art,which is in tune with Steiner’s.The Wisdom of Confucius is the representative of the series which aim at spreading oriental wisdom to the west.It was a hit firstly published in 1938 and has enjoyed enduring popularity since then.This thesis,taking the version of FLTRP as study object,attempts to describe and interpret Lin’s editing of The Wisdom of Confucius from the perspective of Steiner ’s hermeneutic motion."Trust"—affinitive selection,"aggression"—extraction of meaning,"incorporation" and "restitution"—transfer of meaning are employed for one thing to illuminate the applicability of Steiner’s hermeneutic motion to Chinese classics translation and,for another to probe the unique cultural translation mode of Lin Yutang.Selecting qualitative analysis as its main research method,this thesis is constituted of six chapters:Chapter One is a general introduction including the research background,research significance,hypotheses and the layout.Chapter Two offers a literature review of both Steiner’s hermeneutic motion and The Wisdom of Confucius.Chapter Three introduces Steiner’s translation theory systematically and constructs a theoretical mode to guide this study.Besides,two groups of translation terms are differentiated.Chapter Four presents some necessary information about research methods of this thesis and texts chosen.Chapter Five elucidates the presentation of "trust","aggression","incorporation" and"restitution" in The Wisdom of Confucius as well as Lin’s cultural translation mode,involving the comparison of the sources and the target text,the statistics about strategy orientation in translation of Chinese culture-specific item and classical Chinese function words and the illustration from the words,phrases,sentences and rhetoric and so forth.Chapter Six draws a systematical conclusion of this thesis.Major findings,coming after analysis are as follows.Firstly,Lin’s editing The Wisdom of Confucius is a process of affinitive trust,aggression based on understanding,purposeful incorporation and restitution for balance.Secondly,Lin distinguishingly adopts different translation strategies and methods in order to achieve the balanced text.Thirdly,in view of the complexity of language transfer and the plurality of understanding in Chinese classics translation,Steiner’s hermeneutic motion has great potential in pragmatic translation.Last but not least,"faithfulness" in cultural level means anything but absolute equivalence.Instead,it is usually represented by loyalty and reasonability,which will be instructive for the future translation of Chinese classics.