A Study Of Hutchinson’s English Translation Of The Family Sayings Of Confucius From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

As the most original,reliable and informative Confucian classics,The Family Sayings of Confucius is regarded as the "The foremost authoritative book for studying Confucianism",and it is essential for understanding the philosophical,political,ethical,and educational thoughts of the Confucianism.However,because The Family Sayings of Confucius had been regarded as ’a fake book’ until the 1970s,there were no complete English translations,except for the first ten chapters translated by A.B.Hutchinson,a British missionary to China in the late Qing Dynasty.Therefore,it is of great significance to study Hutchinson’s translation of The Family Sayings of Confucius.Research shows that proper nouns such as personal names,place names and official titles abound in The Family Sayings of Confucius.The translation of these nouns directly affects the readability of the target text;The Family Sayings of Confucius is rich in culture-loaded words which represent the essence of traditional Chinese culture and the personality of the Chinese nation,whose accurate translation is directly related to the foreign communication of Chinese culture.The translation of cohesive devices has a close influence on the transmission of coherent information in the target text.In view of this,this thesis uses the fidelity rule,the Skopos rule,the coherence rule and the function plus loyalty rule of Skopos theory to conduct a comprehensive analysis and study of the above three aspects.The analysis shows that the translation of proper nouns and culture-loaded words by Hutchinson conforms to the fidelity rule;the translation of proper nouns and culture-loaded words conforms to the expression habits of the target language,facilitates the understanding of the target language readers,complying to the Skopos rule;when translating culture-loaded words,especially religious culture-loaded words,the feelings of target language readers are also taken into consideration on the basis of respecting the original text,which conforms to the loyalty rule;the translation of cohesive devices is concise and clear,complying to the coherence rule.These findings will contribute towards the provision of a reference scheme for a future translation of the whole book of The Family Sayings of Confucius.