A Comparative Study On Two English Versions Of Shangshu From The Perspective Of Translator's Subjectivity

Basing on the theory of translator's subjectivity,this thesis attempts to make a comparative study on Shangshu translated by English missionary James Legge in the19^thcentury and Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren in the 20^thcentury,and mainly focus on discussing the differences in various aspects of the two versions due to translator's subjectivity and try to explore further the reasons that lead to the differences between the two translators as well as their versions.Translator's subjectivity refers to the subjective initiative that translator,as the subject of translation,in order to realize his translation purpose,shows in the process of translation with a precondition of respecting the source text.It is a dialectical unity of translator's passivity,purpose and initiative.Translator's subjectivity runs through whole process of translation activity,it also inevitably leaves traces of such activity in translation text.By applying close reading,comparative research,case analysis and other research methods,the author of this thesis finds that in the translations of Shangshu by Legge and Karlgren,translator's subjectivity play strong roles in various aspects such as in their choice of source text,translation strategy,cultural difference treatment,thought convey of source and target texts and so on.Therefore,the two English versions show some essential differences.First of all,out of respect for the“completeness”of the source text,Legge chooses Mei Ze's Gu Wen Shangshu while sinologist Karlgren chooses Jin Wen Shangshu,a more orthodox version.Secondly,as for translation strategy,the two English versions show some certain similarities in compensation strategy,treatment of voice,and rhetoric devices,but the differences are also obvious.They both adopt compensation strategies in lexical,grammatical and textual compensation,but the compensation methods are quite different.For example,for lexical compensation,both of them are inclined to compensate by making annotation.Legge attaches importance to compensating for cultural and intellectual background,while Karlgren pays attention to compensating for the description of original content.As for the using of rhetoric devices,Legge tends to use free translation and obviously adds some rhetoric types to enhance rhetoric effects.While Karlgren is inclined to adopt literal translation and tries to pursue the correspondence between Chinese and English and so the rhetoric effect is weaker.In their translation of culture-loaded words,even though they both attempt to convey the original meaning accurately,and their methods are different,but there is a loss of original semantics on the whole.At last,in the original thought and translator's will expression level,Legge strives to be faithful and fully convey the will of source text,while Karlgren tends to select and manipulate the source text to some extent by translating creatively and rewriting if necessary.However,neither of them successfully interpret the idea of“Wangdao”in Shangshu instead of showing a traditional thought of kingship of the west.Legge initially comes into contact with and translates Shangshu as a missionary.With strict missionary training background and the inspiration of the ideology of western-centered civilization in the 19th century and Victorian poetics,his original intention of translating Shangshu is to transform Confucian classics so as to facilitate his fellow missionaries preaching in China.His version bears an obvious imprint of religious literature.As a linguist,Karlgren translates Shangshu in a rapidly developing knowledge trend of Western Sinology,his main purpose is to provide a corpus for the study of ancient Chinese phonetics,his version shows an effort to maintain the form and style of the source text and embodies his desire to pursue the“literariness”and“aesthetics”of historical prose works.Both Legge and Karlgren once claim that they adhere faithful attitude towards the source text of Shangshu.However,due to the internal drive of their translation purpose,they all show their own subjective initiative source text choosing to the artistic re-creation of the language level and so on.It is the existence and inevitable function of translator's subjectivity that the two English versions show their own unique characteristics and finally become classics in many English translations of Shangshu.The case study of this thesis shows that the translator's subjectivity is a basic issue in translation practice and study,and it is also an important issue that cannot be ignored in the study of translation versions.