A Comparative Study Of The Three English Versions Of Sun Tzu’s The Art Of War From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has been known as a great Chinese military treatise. Itenjoys good fame and reputation both abroad and at home. The philosophy in this bookcan not only be applied to military affairs but also to business, sports, diplomacy andother fields. After it is introduced abroad, it has been translated in different languagesamong which the number of its English versions takes the first place. Many westernersread it and put the philosophy into their life. Although some researches about its Englishtranslation have been done it is far away sufficiency.Reception Theory originates in1960s in Germany as a theory of literary criticism.Different from traditional theories, it emphasizes the active role of readers in the processof reading. With its fresh viewpoints, it exerts unique influence on literary translationstudy. The writer of this thesis mainly applies horizon of expectation, fusion of horizon,aesthetic distance and indeterminacy these four concepts to conduct her discussion.According to Jauss, readers have pre-understanding before reading. Reader’s horizon ofexpectation is determined by his existing knowledge, life experience, aesthetic preference,cultural background and so on. The horizon of expectation will be changing as time goes by. Therefore, translators may have different horizons of expectations to interpret thesame literary work and the consideration of target readers’ horizon of expectation leads toproper translation strategies used. Iser holds that literary work is not closed and hermeticbut open to everyone. Every literary work has indeterminacies which call for readers toconcretize. Readers need to shorten the aesthetic distance between themselves and theliterary work to achieve the fusion of horizon. Only by readers’ concretization can aliterary work finish its interpretation and get new life.The writer of this thesis aims to make a comparative study of three English versionsof Sun Tzu’s The Art of War from the Perspective of Reception Theory. Lin Wusun’s,Giles’ and Griffith’s translations are selected. The present author compares the threeversions from two aspects: linguistic aspect and cultural aspect. Detailed analysis will begiven in Chapter four and Chapter five. Through analysis, the present writer intends tofigure out how the horizon of expectation of the original text, the translator and the targetreaders influence the translating, how the translator concretizes the indeterminacy toshorten the aesthetic distance for target readers to achieve fusion of horizon. Aftercomparison, the present writer will conclude which translator of the three has done thebest job from the perspective of Reception theory.