A Comparative Study On English Versions Of Lunyu From The Perspective Of Eco-Translatology

Lunyu is a key component of Chinese classics whose popularity is gained by its linguistic features,cultural values and educational effects.Previous studies on Lunyu were mostly conducted from one aspects of production-oriented studies,translator studies,keywords translation and neglected sustainable development of translation in the translational eco-environment.This thesis takes Arthur Waley’s,D.C.Lau’s and Pan Fuen&Wen Shaoxia’s English versions of Lunyu as corpus to analyze different translators’ translation strategies and their conversions in linguistic dimension,cultural dimension and communicative dimension with the theoretical guidance of Eco-Translatoloy.It attempts to provide comprehensive reference for future translators’efforts and help better disseminate Chinese culture.This thesis mainly takes qualitative and quantitative analysis as its research method.In the aspect of translation characteristics,it figures out that Waley’s version preserves the cultural value and literary nature of Lunyu.D.C.Lau’s version is more precise in his words and strives to be in line with original author’s communicative intention.Pan&Wen’s version not only selects target language precisely,but also restores original literary style and the original author’s communicative intension.Taking their translation strategies into consideration,this thesis helps provide concrete translation strategies as follows,In the linguistic dimension,literal translation can be adopted when there is a corresponding word or sentence pattern in English.Without a corresponding word or sentence pattern,the method of amplification and transcreation can be adopted and annotation is also worthy of consideration.In the cultural dimension,it is recommended to adopt the method of transcreation and amplification or adding annotations to further explain the original information about traditional Chinese culture and theme contained in the source text.In addition,in the aspect of translation of philosophical terms,translators need to consider the context carefully and make an appropriate selection between unified translation and complete restoration of the original information.In terms of translation strategies,free translation and transcreation can help to better deliver the original theme.In the communicative dimension,the translator needs to have a deep reading of the theme context during the translation process and is supposed to abandon subjectivity to a certain extent in the translation process for the purpose of complete delivery of the original author’s communicative intention.