A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Yanshi Jiaxun

Yanshi Jiaxun,an important Chinese classic,vividly describes social phenomenon.As the father of family instructions,it exerts a far-reaching influence on teaching descendents how to deal with social affairs.This dissertation aims to compare two representative English versions of Yanshi Jiaxun by two Chinese scholars,namely Deng Siyu’s Family Instructions for the Yen Clan and Zong Fuchang’s Admonitions for the Yan Clan,from the perspectives of functional approaches,foreignization,and domestication.The research is carried out from linguistic and cultural aspects.From linguistic aspects,some mistranslations are inevitably revealed because of lexical and syntactical differences between ancient and modern Chinese,and the differences between Chinese and English.Lexically,misinterpretation accounts for elements related with meanings of the same word,diachronic shift of the word,and interchangeable Chinese characters.The syntactical analysis of the thesis falls into two parts:analysis of the context and sentence division.Difficulties in conveying the source meaning are created by the lack of subject or object,passive sentences without markers,allusions and pronouns;long sentences without punctuations puzzle translators;distinct sentence structures between Chinese and English also become the hindrance to rendition.As for shortcomings,suggestions were offered in light of numerous documents and records such as dictionaries.Culturally,the thesis concentrates on the following four parts:funeral customs,miscellaneous arts,kinship terms,and names of people.Both two translators exercise foreignization and domestication flexibly.For words without any equivalent,transliteration with footnotes can help preserve the original culture;for original terms easily accessible to readers,literal translation is a good way to translate the text smoothly as well as to make the target readers experience local culture.As for puzzling words unrelated to the culture,liberal translation is a good choice.Comparing the two versions,the thesis presented their respective strong and weak points.