Comparative Studies On The English Translations Of Zhuangzi: The Perspectives Of Semantics, Communication And Rhetorics

In the light of modern translation theories such as hermeneutics and Skopos theory, this thesis undertakes a comparative study of three English versions respectively by---James Legge of the late 19^th century, Lin Yutang of the mid-20^th century and Wang Rongpei of the late 20^th century, probing into the linguistic and cultural aspects and evaluating the loss and gain in each version.The first perspective of the thesis is linguistic. It's found out that the three translators adopted literal translation with distinct methods and marked by different styles: Legge's faithfulness and preciseness, Lin's pithiness and liveliness, and Wang's fluency and readability. Then, wrong interpretations by the three translators are analyzed on the lexical and syntactical levels, which result from misunderstandings. Last, the thesis illustrates the treatment of the figures of speech such as onomatopoeia, reduplicated words and catchword repetition. The translators' failure of keeping their rhetorical effects as a result of the discrepancy between the two languages and rhetorical systems tarnished the artistic appeal of the original to some degree.The other perspective of the thesis is cultural. First, the thesis compares and analyzes the translations of the culture-specific words, which indicates that Legge's and Lin's translations of some culture-specific words were under the influence of their life experiences and closely related with their religious backgrounds and that all the three translators failed to use consistent terms to translate some culture-specific words with high frequency, which is to the disadvantage of disseminating culture. Then, the translations of the chapter titles of Zhuangzi are illustrated with focus on Legge's, which employed the approach of foreignization by means of translating them first with Pinyin of the Wade system then in English, displaying his respect for Chinese culture. Last, the mistranslations arising from cultural misreading are dwelt on, which proves that a translator's personal limitation will affect his comprehension of the original text and consequently his translation and that a good translator should be qualified both bilingually and biculturally.Finally, in accordance with Derrida's theory of "relevant translation", this thesis brings forward the necessity of retranslating Zhuangzi.