| As a part of Chinese traditional culture,tea culture plays a significant role in improving the world’s cultural exchanges.Cha Jing,written by Lu Yu,the founder of the Chinese tea ceremony,is the earliest,most complete and comprehensive monograph on tea in China.As a cultural classic and a representative work of tea culture,Cha Jing promoted the global dissemination of Chinese tea culture.Translation and research on Chinese cultural classics can also facilitate overseas communication and development of Chinese traditional culture.In 1974,The Classic of Tea,a full English translation version of Cha Jing by Francis Ross Carpenter was published in Britain.In 2009,The Classic of Tea,translated by Chinese scholars Jiang Xin and Jiang Yi,was published and included in the Library of Chinese Classics.This is the first full English translation version of Cha Jing by Chinese translators.To promote the translation study on Cha Jing,a guiding theory should be chosen.The author chose Neo-ecosophy of Translation as the guiding theory to analyse these two translation versions of Cha Jing.The theory was the innovation and development of eco-translatology and was first proposed by Professor Hu Gengshen in 2019.Neo-ecosophy of Translation includes three theoretical sources.The first theoretical source is the Western ecologism,which mainly comprises ecological rationality and ecological holism.The second source is the Eastern ecological wisdom represented as "harmony between man and nature".The third theoretical source is the adaptation and selection theory represented as three-dimensional transformation.The Neo-ecosophy of Translation theory not only follows the global research trend of ecologism,but also provides a new perspective for translation studies.This study compared Francis Ross Carpenter’s translation version with Jiang Yi and Jiang Xin’s version under the guidance of Neo-ecosophy of Translation.The author collected ample cases from both versions to analyze the translation of Cha Jing from the three dimensions of language,culture and communication.The author summarized the translation strategies and methods used in the two versions and concluded the way that the Eastern ecological wisdom of Cha Jing was presented in their translations.Guided by the Neo-ecosophy of Translation theory,this study compared and analyzed two English translation versions of Cha Jing and drew the following conclusions.First,on the linguistic dimension,the translation methods commonly used by translators include adjusting word order and adding conjunctions and relatives.Translators pay much attention to word selection to make sure the meaning of the source text is properly conveyed.Second,on the cultural dimension,translators mostly adopt domestication and foreignization as well as combination of multiple translation methods as translation strategies.To mitigate the cultural vacancy and semantic lacuna caused by cultural differences,translators make further explanations of the source text and add some background information to improve readers’ understandings.As for culture-loaded expressions,translators always adopt the translation method of transliteration plus annotation.Thirdly,on the communicative dimension,addition and omission are commonly used methods by translators.Through using these methods,the important content of the source text can be highlighted and the burden of readers will be lessen.More importantly,tea ceremony spirits can be transmitted to the readers,tea culture and the Eastern ecological wisdom can be fully interpreted,realizing the ecological value of the source text.Based on the research conclusions,this study mainly put forward the following suggestions for related research.First,translators should maintain the balance and harmony of the translational eco-environment through multi-dimensional adaptation and selection.Second,translators should analyze the source text and translate it according to linguistic,cultural and communicative dimensions.Third,according to the theory of Eastern ecological wisdom,translators should shoulder the responsibility of making appropriate explanations of the author’s intent and fully conveying the cultural connotations implied in the text,thus conveying the ecological wisdom of the source text.Under the guidance of the Neo-ecosophy of Translation theory,this study concluded the translation principles followed by translators as well as translation strategies and methods used in the English translation of Cha Jing,hoping to provide some enlightenment for further related studies. |
