A Study Of Vocabularies In David Collie's English Translation Of Da Xue

As an essential missionary from London Missionary Society,David Collie was the first to translate and publish Four Books in English in 1828,which is an important literature in early 1900s but hasn't received enough and thorough attention it deserves.This thesis focuses on the vocabularies in David Collie's English translation of Da Xue,by comparison with other translations and dictionary to illustrate the chronological change of the translation of Da Xue and tries to track down the source of the words Collie chose.This thesis falls into three chapters.Chapter ? introduces the basic information of Da Xue and the translations by Robert Morrison and James Legge in detail and further explains the reason for choosing these two translations for research.Chapter ? is based on the comparison with the English words used by Morrison,Collie and Legge.The conclusion is that the vocabularies in Collie's English translation are more accurate than Morrison's and more specific than Legge's.In addition,the comparison with Dictionary of the Chinese Language in three parts by Morrison testifies Collie's reference to the dictionary during his translation.Chapter ? studies four words and expressions in Collie's translation which are also used in King James Version,demonstrating the religious factor unavoidable in translation works of missionaries.This reminds researchers of the need to make more thorough analysis and objective judgment of translation behavior.In conclusion,the vocabularies in Collie's translation of Da Xue are firstly more accurate than those of Morrison,and secondly have deeply influenced the translation of Legge and still take over the lead with fewer ambiguous words.Third,with more words borrowed from the Bible,the translation of Collie could be depreciated for its Christian style,which on the other hand helps the reader with better understanding.