On Xu Yuanchong's Ci-Poetry Translation From The Perspective Of Translation Ethics

Ethics is the study on the conventions of interpersonal relationship in a certain society and their corresponding moral principles. Thus, being a kind of communicative activity, translation in some sense can be regarded as an ethical activity and it needs ethics as its guidance. It is generally believed that the study of translation ethics in the circle of translation theory began in the 1980s, marked by the proposal of the concept of translation ethics by French translation theorist Antoine Berman. Afterwards, Lawrence Venuti, Anthony Pym and Andrew Chesterman also brought forth their own thoughts on translation ethics, among which Chesterman's idea can be regarded as the representative. Chesterman clarifies his idea by elucidating four current models of translation ethics, namely, ethics of representation-to represent the source text, or the source author's intention, accurately; ethics of service-to fulfill the aim of the translation as set by the client and accepted or negotiated by the translator; ethics of communication-to recognize the Other as a 'subject', with whom one can indeed communicate; norm-based ethics-to behave as one is expected in accordance with the norms. In addition, Chesterman adds another ethical model: ethics of commitment-to support the striving for excellence, the wanting to be a good translator. His concept crystallizes the existing ideas about translation ethics, thus providing us with a multi-dimensional perspective for studying diverse translation thoughts and practice.Based on this new and comprehensive theory, this thesis discusses Xu Yuanchong's translation theories and makes a tentative evaluation on his representative translated work-The Favorite Tang and Song Poems in the hope of expanding our minds on the study of Xu's translation thoughts and practice, and proving the necessity and positive effect of introducing ethics into translation studies, which the author thinks would be of some value to the development of Chinese translation cause.In addition to introduction and conclusion, the thesis mainly consists of four chapters:Chapter 1 gives a brief survey on translation ethics, including the definition of translation ethics, current studies about this issue, with special focus on Chesterman's elaboration of five models of translation ethics.Chapter 2 makes a brief introduction to Xu Yuanchong's translation thoughts and achievements, mainly expounding that his purpose of translating Ci-poetry is in accordance with ethics of service and communication, and his theory of "three beauties" and that of "sanzhi" embody the spirit of representation ethics and norm-based ethics respectively. Chapter 3 deals with Xu's The Favorite Tang and Song Poems from the perspective of representation ethics. In this chapter, the evaluation is classified into three aspects, i.e. phonetic devices, image and artistic conception and form.Chapter 4 copes with the conflict between ethics of representation and norm-based ethics, the coordination function performed by ethics of communication and service, which is manifested by different grammatical rules of the English and Chinese language.The conclusion provides the summary of the whole thesis. The author thinks that in Xu Yuanchong's Ci-poetry translation, he follows representation ethics in most cases; when there emerges conflict between representation and norm-based ethics, the choice made by him is under the guidance and coordination of ethics of communication and service. In this situation, more often than not, he would choose norm-based ethics instead of representation ethics.