A Study On English Translation Of Zhongyong By Roger T. Ames And David L. Hall From The Perspective Of Bourdieu’s Sociology

As one of Chinese Confucian classics,Zhongyong contains rich philosophical thoughts and can be used to guide current social practice.So far,the dissemination of Zhongyong in the English-speaking world has a history of nearly 200 years,and it was first introduced to the West by the British missionary in the 19^th century.The 20^thcentury witnessed the vigorous development of the English translation of Zhongyong.In that time,more than a dozen versions were published and the most famous was the version translated by Ku Hongming.However,taking the culture of the target language as the center,these translations adopted the domesticating strategy and interpreted Zhongyong with the philosophical concepts in the West,ignoring the“otherness”of Chinese philosophy.At the beginning of the 21^st century,in order to retain the“otherness”of Chinese philosophy and resist Western ethnocentrism,Roger T.Ames took foreignization as his main translation strategy to translate Zhongyong,which not only improved the status of Chinese Confucian culture,but also conducted equal communications between Eastern and Western cultures.Therefore,in order to better make Chinese classics“go global”,it is particularly necessary to probe into the objective and subjective factors which lead to the success of Ames’s English translation of Zhongyong.As for the study on English translation of Chinese classics,scholars mainly study from the micro level and are limited to the analysis of language and text.They attach too much importance to the study of translator’s subjectivity,such as translator’s translation motivation and translation thought,instead of paying attention to the objective restraining factors.In fact,apart from linguistic level,the study on the English translation of Chinese classic also needs to be carried out from the macro-social level.Since the 1990s,with the application of interdisciplinary research methods,exploring translation activities from the perspective of sociology has become one of the hotspots in the field of translation studies.In recent years,many sociological theories have been applied to translation studies,the most popular of which is the theory of sociologist Bourdieu.His core concepts,such as field,habitus and capital,consider both social restricted factors and individual subjective factors,and emphasize the mutual construction between social practice and individual behaviors,which are closely combined with translation practice.Therefore,drawing on Bourdieu’s sociological theory to study translation activities can well combine the study of language and text at the micro level with the socio-cultural study at the macro level,which not only brings translation studies a new perspective,but also helps researchers to recognize translation activities from the sociological dimension.Taking Bourdieu’s sociology as the theoretical framework,the thesis takes the English translation of Zhongyong by Ames as the research object,and adopts the method of qualitative analysis to analyze the factors affecting the choice of source text,the choice of translation strategies and the acceptance of target text in a specific field respectively from the perspective of field,habitus and capital,so as to explore the deep reasons for the wide spread of Ames’s translation.Firstly,the thesis analyzes the influence of social field,literary field and translation field on the Ames’s choice of Zhongyong.Since the 21^st century,Confucianism has gradually become the research hotspot in Western academic circles.After the collapse of post-structuralism,Westerners began to seek new spiritual comfort.Their expression reflected in literary field was the desire for the return of morality.The core idea of Zhongyong was in line with the spiritual pursuit of Westerners at that time,which promoted its dissemination in the Western literary field.In the translation field,the previous interpretations of Chinese philosophy were based on the Western concepts,which made Westerners thought that Chinese philosophy was just an appendage of Western philosophy.Therefore,Ames hopes to change the Western prejudice against Chinese philosophy and improve the status of Chinese philosophy by disseminating Confucian classics.Secondly,from the perspective of habitus,the thesis probes into the translation habitus of Ames and analyzes its influence on his choice of translation strategies.Ames’s good growth environment and rich academic experiences have shaped his unique translation habitus,that is,being faithful to the source text and paying attention to the readability of the translation.When translating Zhongyong,he mainly adopts the foreignizing strategy to present the“otherness”of Chinese culture and makes a comparison between Chinese philosophy and Western process philosophy to promote the target readers’understanding of Chinese philosophy,so as to achieve a balance between faithfulness and readability.Thirdly,based on the concept of capital,the thesis analyzes how cultural capital and symbolic capital influence the dissemination of Ames’s English translation of Zhongyong.Ames’s cultural capital mainly benefits from his study experience in China,Japan and Europe,which lays the foundation for him to enter the field of translation and enables him to take on the tough task of translating Zhongyong.Besides,Ames’s reputation in the translation field and the core position of Zhongyong are also transformed into symbolic capital to promote the widespread dissemination of English translation of Zhongyong at home and abroad.Through the analysis,it is found that translation activities stem from the needs of social communication and have social attributes.Therefore,in order to better interpret the relationship between translation activities and socio-cultural factors,translation studies should not only pay attention to the linguistic aspect,but also focus on the sociological and cultural aspects.The value of the thesis is that drawing on Bourdieu’s sociological theory to study the English translation of Zhongyong can well combine the textual study at the micro level with the socio-cultural study at the macro level,which is conductive to exploring the social restricted factors and individual subjective factors that influence translator’s choices.What’s more,this thesis not only provides a new theoretical perspective for the research of English translation of Zhongyong,but also helps researchers to study the translation and dissemination of Chinese classics from the sociological dimension.