| Chuang Tzu,reckoned as a Chinese philosophical canon,has managed to engendered impressive reading and sophisticated appreciation that dismantle restraints and demarcations of language,territory,nation,location,and civilization.Transcending regional boundaries of China,the book has undergone metamorphic transformation into world literature in a sense that intensive circulation and profound dissemination have carved out their way to encounter the book in the English-speaking countries.Amid the English translation history of Chuang Tzu for more than a century,two paragon renditions interpreted by James Legge and Burton Watson have engraved their noteworthy hallmarks in the process of Western transmission of Chinese literary classics,thereby substantially consolidating overseas researches pertaining to Chuang Tzu by means of acquiring classic status with historical significance in translation studies.At the present phase,there is a misalignment infiltrated in the evaluation of thick translation strategies implemented in the two renditions,which inadvertently and insinuatively contributes to perceptional deviations on descriptive delineation pertinent to the depiction of the translation process;simultaneously,myriads of scholars have constrained their research emphasis to textual analysis,inflicting negligence on the indispensability of paratext in the translation,dissemination,circulation and acceptance of a rendition;lastly,there is no academic precedent for juxtaposing the two renditions as well as comparing the disparities of different thick translation tactics by synthetically analyzing the entangled intricacies among text,paratext,and context.Leveraging thick translation as perceptional perspective,this thesis incorporates paratext into analytical paradigm and burrows into the discrepancies between the two renditions’ thick translation strategies by comparing translational effects in terms of three layers,namely pre-paratext,annotation,and post-paratext.Additionally,formative impacts of underpinning social context factors are also anticipated to be revealed on the basis of history excavation,context restoration,and cause deduction.By cross-referencing paratexts in different layers,Legge’s rendition has indoctrinated an archaic and exotic style into the pre-paratexts and has harnessed massive cultural information unfolded in the process of documentary examination to replenish into multitudinous and lengthy annotations.Moreover,its post-paratexts is also imbued with a rigorous academic ambience and a prudent research stipulation.Enshrining fidelity norm and worshiping source culture,Legge’s version has become a relatively thick documentary translation brimming with academic authoritativeness and accurate fealty that provides referential values for different disciplines,such as sinology,theology,and literature.On the other hand,Watson’s rendition contrives cultural symbols in the pre-paratexts that concurrently conform to the oriental characteristics and resonate with the philosophical kernel of Chuang Tzu.By juxtaposing documentary attestation and faithful loyalty,Watson’s version utilizes flexible annotations to compensate for cultural vacancies in an acceptable and laconic manner.With an extra assistance of post-paratext to complement authoritativeness,Watson’s version is endowed with a reconciliation among fidelity,readability,acceptability and academic authoritativeness,thereafter realizing the multi-diversification of textual functions as well as integrating literary and documentary nature by catering for recreational reading,academic research,and pedagogical activity.Lastly,by a dissection of social context,it could be sufficiently corroborated that Legge’s thick translation is inextricably interconnected with colonial expansion,missionary requirements,translatorial habitus,translational poetics,and patronage,while Watson’s rendition is remarkably immersed in the influence from spiritual conventions,cultural movements,environmental protection appeals,and ecological considerations.In view of this,it can be recapitulated that the English translation of Chinese canon is a ramification of rebirth and transformation under a specific social context in the target nation.Thus,translators of canonical texts should attach advertent priority to the pivotal position of paratext when employing thick translation strategies.Apart from deliberating wording and phrasing of the main text,it is also of grave necessity to accentuate marginal information carriers to optimize image multidimensionality and function abundance of a rendition.Different groups of people’s demands should be intensively echoed by devising miscellaneous potentials of function with an anticipation to further augment circulation and fortify reception to the maximum extent,so as to ultimately convert Chinese Culture from“Going Out” to “Going In”,or even “Invited In”.By and large,this thesis lucubrates deeply the roles and functions of thick translation and paratext in the interactions between Chinese canon and world literature,construes a substantial analytical framework for comparative study on thick translation of canonical renditions,unfolds the English translation of Chuang Tzu’s interpretative mechanism in terms of traits and social causes,fully explores the historical status and contemporary value of the renditions,and enriches the documentary archives and historical system of the Western transmission of Chuang Tzu.To enunciate it more precisely,this is conducive to triggering inspirational epiphanies and practical enlightenments with respect to probing into the role of thick translation on the image variation in renderings,to cultivating tactical introspections of paratext for cultural translation,to expatiate the reconstruction mode of rendition meaning,as well as to get the hang of the interactive communications between Chinese and foreign cultures. |
