A Comparative Study Of Three English Versions Of Tao Te Ching

The English versions of Tao Te Ching translated by James Legge,Arthur Waley and Liu Yutang are studied in this thesis.In the first chapter,the history of Tao Te Ching English translations and its importance in cross-cultural activities are discussed.Previous studies on this and various related subjects are chiefly described.There’s also a brief introduction of domestication and foreignization as the theory applied in this thesis.The purpose and value of this thesis are also consisted in this part.The second chapter focuses on how the translators dealt with the essential key words“道”,“德”,“有名”,“无名”.According to statistics,“Tao”and“way”are the most frequently used translations for“道”.Transliterating it to Tao is regarded as the best approach in light of canonization.Translations of“德”varies greatly and transliteration used in this case is minimum,which shows a lack of attention on this essential term.James Legge did a better job on the translation of“有名”and“无名”for he recreated the syntactic structure of the original text.In the third chapter nineteen cultural-loaded words are selected and divided into four categories: ecological,material,social and religious.It is found that on the translation of these words,Legge and Waley used domestication and foreignization fifty-fifty,while Lin overall preferred the former,which while improving readability,caused a loss of culture connotation.Chapter Four deals with how well the translators reproduced the ambiguous and curt style of the original text.English is a hypotactic language while Chinese is paratactic,and difference between the two makes translation a difficult task,especially in aspect of style.Three paragraphs representative of the unique style and corresponding translations are chosen to be analyzed.Conclusion is that style-wise,Waley and Lin preferred domestication while Legge preferred foreignization,which makes the latter’s translation less readable.In the Epilogue,a summary of the strategies adopted by the three translators as well as their advantages and disadvantages are made.It is also concluded that domestication and foreignization aren’t two opposing strategies,that translators should make their own choice based on the genre,theme of the original text,and targeted readers.Balance between readability and loyalty to the original text should be reached on the basis that translators recognize fully the difference between the source language and the target language.