The Translation And Study Of The Shiji In France

The first general history in the form of a chronicle by Sima Qian,the Shi Ji(The Records of the Grand Historian)has spread far and wide in the two thousand years since its creation.It has been nearly two centuries since the first French translation of the Shiji was published in 1828,and a number of translations and research achievements on the Shiji have been published in the French Sinology.But at present the research on the Western translation of the Shiji in China is mainly focused on the English-speaking world,while the research on the French is neglected and the research achievements are few.Therefore,this article takes the French translations and the research achievements of the Shiji as its object,and attempts to explore the history of the French translations of the Shiji,the characteristics and strategies of the famous French translators of the Shiji and their French translations,as well as the research on the Shiji in French sinology in a more holistic and comprehensive manner from various aspects such as reception aesthetics,translation science and historiography.In addition to the introduction,the text is divided into four chapters and eleven sections.In the introductory section,the reasons and significance of the topic are explained,the current state of research is reviewed,and the object of the study and its methodology are introduced.The first chapter deals with the reception and dissemination of the Shiji in France.The first chapter traces the background and history of the western translation of the Shiji,followed by a detailed account of the reception and dissemination of the Shiji in France.From the 16 th century onwards,a large number of western missionaries came to China to encounter and read the Shiji.This was the medium through which the translation of the Shiji in the West moved from the translation of selected chapters to the teaching of courses,gradually gaining the attention of Sinologists,and then to a parallel process of large-scale translation and diversified research.Against this background of reception,the history of the reception and dissemination of the Shiji in France emerges more clearly.It is broadly divided into three phases,namely the beginning period(19th to the beginning of the 20 th century),when the works were mainly translated and specialisation and popularisation developed in parallel;the development period(early 20 th to the 1960s),which was characterised by the juxtaposition of selected translations of chapters and textual studies;and the period of recovery and transformation(1960s to the present),when translation and research showed a tendency to develop in depth.Chapter two examines the translation strategies of (?)douard Chavannes’ s translation of the Shiji.Chavannes is regarded as “the leading European sinologist”,and his translation of the Shiji includes the first fifty chapters of the Book.Influenced by the trend of positivism and scientism,Chavannes applied fieldwork and bibliography to the translation of the Shiji,forming two paradigms: the bibliographic mode of translation faithful to the original text and the empirical mode of interpretation.At the lexical level,direct,phonetic and thick translations are adopted to reproduce the connotations of culturally loaded words;at the syntactic level,every effort is made to retain the original sentence order and make appropriate adjustments to sentence expressions in accordance with French grammar;at the rhetorical level,direct translations are used to reproduce the rhetorical features of the text;at the paratextual level,the principle of objective and factual interpretation is followed,and at the paratextual level,the principle of objective and realistic interpretation is followed,and the cited texts are examined in a documentary way,with meticulous evidence.The Chavannes’ s translation,with its accurate and faithful translation and detailed commentary,has become a model for Western translations of the Shiji.The third chapter examines the translation strategies of Jacques Pimpaneau’s translation of the Shiji.A contemporary French sinologist,Pimpaneau succeeded Chavannes in completing a full translation of The Records of the Grand Historian.His translation consists mainly of the biographical part of The Records of the Grand Historian,and the translation of the text is reader-oriented,with an emphasis on reader acceptance.In the translation,the translation strategy is flexibly applied according to the semantics of the original text,faithful to the original text but not bound to the oneto-one correspondence of linguistic forms,forming a dynamic reciprocal model of“meaning” fidelity.At the lexical level,we mainly adopt the substitution method and the Italian translation method,using the equivalent language to replace culturally loaded words;at the syntactic level,the order of words or components changes according to the grammar of the target language;at the rhetorical level,we retain the rhetorical techniques of the original language to the greatest extent.The translations are characterized by a “flashy but realistic” approach.The fourth chapter discusses the dimensions of the study of the Shiji in French sinology and its contribution.The first dimension is the historiographical view of the Shiji,reflecting its historical view of “history through the eyes of the story”;the second dimension is the evaluation of the chronicle style of the Shiji,which is considered to be both pioneering and fragmentary;the third is the dimension of the comparison of the differences and similarities between the Shiji and the Hanshu.The third is the comparison of the differences and similarities between the Shiji and the Hanshu,which concludes that Ban Gu and Sima Qian are different from each other in terms of text and meaning.Chavannes’ s Introduction of the shiji is an important research work,there are five chapters,the author explores five aspects of Sima Qian’s life,the era of the creation of the Shiji,the historical sources of the Shiji,Sima Qian’s historical thought and the later transmission of the Shiji.And The story of Xi Wang Mu’s journey to the West is a key element in the theory of the indigenous origins of Chinese civilization,and it shows that the ancient history of China is characterized by both oral tradition and historical facts.