A Study Of The English Translation Of The Works Of The American Episcopalian Missionary Woman Lydia Mary Fay

This paper focuses on the missionary career of Lydia Mary Fay(1804-1878),a19 th century American Episcopal Church missionary to China,and her series of English translations aimed at introducing Chinese culture to Western readers.Fay came to China in 1851,and died in September 1878 in Shandong.She was the first single woman missionary of the American Episcopal Church to come to China and the longest serving single woman missionary in China.Her missionary activities were mainly of two kinds: running a school and working as a translator.Domestic and international studies of Fay have focused mainly on her schooling activities,neglecting her translation work.This was an oversight in understanding Fay’s missionary career.Among the American Episcopal missionaries to China at that time,Fay’s language skills were relatively high,and she translated a large number of articles related to Chinese literature in Chinese and English for the purpose of preaching and introducing Chinese culture to Western readers,including classical Chinese novels,plays,biographies,legal systems,social customs,etc.This thesis focuses on her English translations aimed at spreading Chinese culture to Western readers.Although these works are fragmentary and generally not systematic,the breadth and depth of their understanding of Chinese culture can still be seen.Fay’s translations are scattered in journals run by different missionaries,and a total of fourteen English translations have been found,it includes eight biographies,two classical Chinese novels,one traditional Chinese drama and three articles on Chinese etiquette and law.According to the time of publication,Fay’s translation work can be divided into three stages,each of which presents different characteristics,It not only reflects the degree of her Chinese language refinement and deepening understanding of Chinese culture,but also correlates with the change in her style of acting under three bishops with different leadership styles.The thesis intends to proceed from two levels of research: Translation Text and Translation Culture,on the one hand,we stage Fay’s extant English translations in chronological order,and study Fay’s translation strategies,translation characteristics,artistic features and other issues from the translations themselves,in conjunction with the translation base,and further analysis was done to derive the process of change of Fay’s translation work.On the other hand,from the perspective of translation culture,this paper studies Fay’s selection criteria,translation motivation and value orientation,etc.Further,through the image of China presented in Fay’s "other" perspective,we explore Fay’s strategy and change of ideology in the conflict between two heterogeneous cultures,Chinese and Western.The paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter first introduces the history of the American Episcopal Church’s mission in China as the background of Fay’s work in China,then compares Fay’s life experience and divides his English translation work into three stages according to time.From chapter two to chapter four,the three stages of Fay’s English translation are analyzed in detail.The second chapter mainly studies the first stage of Fay’s translation from 1864 to 1865,which is represented by the biographies of ancient Chinese characters.It points out that these works are not biographies in the strict sense,but literary re-creation based on historical records.The third chapter analyzes the second phase of Fay’s translations between 1872 to 1874,which were mainly for practical purposes and covered a wide range of topics,including current affairs and news,etiquette and legal systems,and drama in China at that time.Chapter Four mainly analyzes the third stage of Fay’s translations in 1877,the subject matter of which is mainly Chinese classical novels.This stage is the mature stage of her translation work,through her addition and deletion of the translation,we can find that her language proficiency and knowledge of Chinese culture has reached a proficiency level.At the same time,different methods have been used to try to translate Chinese poems into western ones.Chapter Five summarizes the evolution of Fay’s English translation strategy by examining her translation motives at different stages,and points out her consistent value orientation and translation principles.Then,by looking at four aspects of the translation: the political and legal system,the life and personality and psychology of Chinese people,the image of Chinese women,and Chinese religion and folk customs,it reveals the duality of various aspects of China and Chinese people in Fay’s writing.