A Study Of The Translation Strategies And Methods In The Two Translation Versions Of The Analects Of Confucius From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

The Analects of Confucius (《论语》), compiled by the disciples of Confucius, isone of the Confucian classics which embodies the political ideas, ethics, moral valuesand principles of education of Confucius. It can be said that the Analects of Confuciuscontains the essence of Chinese traditional culture. Thus the translations of TheAnalects of Confucius and other Chinese classics of high quality can not onlypropagate Chinese traditional culture, promote the inter-cultural exchange between theEast and the West, maintain the existing cultural status of China, but also help toeliminate the prejudice and distortion of Chinese culture. The translation activity ofThe Analects of Confucius has been going on since the Jesuit missionary Matteo Riccitranslated The Four Books into Latin in1953. With China’s international statusgradually enhanced, the outside world has never been so eager to know more aboutChina through the study of the Chinese classics. However the existing translationversions may not meet the requirement of the readers of this time since they aretranslated by translators with different translation purposes during different times. Thisbeing the situation, the retranslation of Chinese classics should be attached importanceto. This thesis aims to probe into the retranslation strategy and method of The Analectsof Confucius in the new times guided by the skopos theory, one of the GermanFunctionalist approaches. The main concept of skopos theory is: the translationpurpose determines translation strategy. In order to demonstrate how the translationstrategies and methods vary with different purposes, this thesis makes a comparativeanalysis of Ku Hung-ming’s and James Legge’s translation versions since the twotranslators translate with totally different purposes. The purpose of Ku Hung-ming’s translation of The Analects of Confucius is to introduce the true Chinese culture in thehope of achieving the understanding and respect of the Western readers for it. Hewanted to correct the distorted image of the Chinese and China in the Western readers’minds through his interpretation and to promote the outstanding Chinese culture whileJames Legge regarded the translation of The Analects of Confucius and other Chineseclassics as a part of his missionary cause. His aimed to introduce Chinese traditionalculture to the missionaries and sinologists in order to make them familiar with the wayof thinking and behaviors of the Chinese thus further develop his missionary cause inChina. Thus Ku Hung-ming’s adopted domestication strategy, or communicativetranslation which was angled towards the target readers and adapted to suit the reader’sway of thinking and expression. Specific translation methods including omission,amplification, analogy and quotation etc. are frequently used by him. On the contrary,James Legge adopted foreignization strategy, he translated in a smaller unit whichwould retain the word and sentence order of the original thus better reflect thelanguage features of the source language. When translating culture-specific terms, healways transliterated them and offered detailed annotation. By this way, the readerswere brought to a foreign culture. Nowadays, inter-cultural communication isdeepening, the outside world is eager to know more about China and Chinese culture,James Legge’s strategies and methods will show their increasing significance.However, foreigniztion strategy does not mean to advocate translators translatingrigidly, even to the extent that the translations are not readable. Rather, it means totranslate Chinese into idiomatic English while taking the distinctive feature of Chineselanguage and culture into consideration. Actually, domestication strategy andforeignization strategy are not totally in the opposition to each other, instead, they cancomplement each other. Culture transplantation needs various methods and modes,therefore, both the two strategies should be adopted. What is important, translatorsshould realize the differences between two cultures, and retain the uniqueness of theculture. Whether to use domestication strategy or foreignization strategy or to use other strategies and methods depends on to what extent the translator attempts to assimilatethe original culture and to what extent he attempts to show differences between twocultures.