On The "Truth-Seeking And Utility-Attaining" Effects Of English Translation Of Chinese Folk Sayings

Chinese folk sayings,carrying rich traditional cultural values,are regarded as the essence of Chinese language.The translation of these sayings constitutes an important part of the translation of Chinese classics,which contributes a lot to promoting Chinese culture to “go global”.This study,on the basis of a bilingual corpus of 154 pairs of Chinese-English folk sayings from Hanan’s 15 translated Ming and Qing short stories,under the principles of the theory of Translator’s Behavior Criticism,especially its“Truth-seeking-Utility-attaining” Evaluative Model of Continuum,attempts to explore the “Truth-seeking and Utility-attaining” effect of Chinese folk saying translation,revealing how Hanan’s academic orientation,audience awareness,and translation thoughts contribute to his translation of Chinese folk sayings.The major findings of this study are as follows:(1)Hanan employs various translation methods,including word-to-word translation,literal translation,literal and free translation,interpretive free translation and naturalized free translation,to achieve“Truth-seeking”,“Inclined Truth-seeking”,“semi-Truth-seeking and semi-Utilityattaining”,“Inclined Utility-attaining” and “Utility-attaining” effects.(2)Hanan’s extra-translation behavior,especially his academic orientation,audience awareness,and translation thoughts,plays a part in the translation of Chinese folk sayings.Specifically speaking,his academic orientation promoted his “Truth-seeking” and“Inclined Truth-seeking” translation of folk sayings;his audience awareness contributes to his “Inclined Utility-attaining” and “Utility-attaining” translation of folk sayings;his against-binary translation thoughts propel him to provide translations that are neither completely “Truth-seeking” or absolutely “Utility-attaining”,highlighting consideration of both features instead of making extreme choices.(3)Hanan’s translation of Chinese folk sayings does show an obvious tendency towards “Truthseeking” and “Inclined Truth-seeking”.In most translation cases,he tried to convey the original meaning by resorting to literal translation,even word-by-word translation,so as to convey the original meaning as much as possible,achieving “Truth-seeking” and“Inclined Truth-seeking” effects.Sinologist translators know both Chinese culture and target readers well,and thus they are identified as an important force for the going-global of Chinese culture.The translation of Chinese folk sayings by Hanan not only represents the source text faithfully,but also boasts its high readability,providing much food for thought for the translation of culture-loaded elements as well as the dissemination of Chinese culture.