A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Zhuangzi

As a distinguished representative of Taoism, Zhuangzi has exerted great influence onChinese philosophy, literature and esthetics etc. Zhuangzi, one of the most importantclassics in China, is the essence of Zhuangzi’s profound ideology and is of great literaryvalue as well. This thesis conducts a comparative study of two English versions ofZhuangzi(Wang Rongpei’s and Victor H.Mair’s) from the perspective of Steiner’s fourfoldhermeneutic translation mode, which consists of trust, aggression, incorporation andrestitution. Briefly speaking, trust means firstly, a translator must believe the text he haschosen is meaningful to translate. Aggression means breaking the barrier of the language tounderstand and extract meaning from the original text. In the third stage, a translator mustincorporate the meaning and the form of the original into the target language. The last stageis to compensate the loss in the process of translating so that a balance can be achieved.This theory can shed some light on translation study as a whole and it can provide acomparatively-new perspective for studies on Zhuangzi’s English translations. Thus, thisthesis compares and analyzes different features of the two English versions of Zhuangzibased on Steiner’s hermeneutic translation mode.Meanwhile, this thesis holds that Gadamer’s concepts “Prejudice” and “Fusion ofHorizons” can perfect Steiner’s fourfold hermeneutic translation mode, for they areclosely related to each other: In the process of trust, translators use their own prejudices tomake evaluation of the text. The principle of Fusion of Horizons is related to theaggression, incorporation and restitution process. In these processes, the translator’shorizon interacts with that of the text so that a new and broader horizon is formed and anew version is produced. Translators should combine the two principles and the four stepsin translation process. It is also the new point of this thesis.Finally, this thesis points out hermeneutic translation theories are important intranslation studies. Due to different understanding, translators may produce differenttranslation versions. However, this does not mean that translators can translate the text atrandom. To produce a correct and successful version, translators should try to get enoughpre-knowledge about the original text and its author before carrying out translation.Translators should respect the text and its author. In this way, translators can avoidmisreading and produce good versions.