In Ancient Prose Translation Literal Translation, Free Translation And Deal With The Term

Chinese ancient classics are always most favored by Chinese culture enthusiasts, especially Zhou yi or the Book of Changes. It is a book of divination, but it also teaches people to behave rationally; therefore, many people think it all-inclusive. Because the original texts are abstruse, many scholars have been trying to explain the canon from their own perspectives. Each only gets somewhat a smattering of it, but their efforts are worth it. Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Book of Changes represents the genius’deep thoughts of this classic, by virtue of the Dao De Jing. And later Kong Ying-da employs most of his academia to interpret it further, by rich citations and persuasive arguments. The author selects Kong’s work on the Tuan and the Image of the hexagram of Qian as his translation object and analyzes them in three aspects: literal translation, paraphrase and special terminologies. By coherent argument and appropriate exemplification, the review presents the readers with three arguments: first, to use literal translation as the most efficient way to translate ancient books; second, to apply paraphrase in the case where imagination is needed and omissions found; third, to be miscellaneous on comprehending terminologies and choosing their "counterparts".