William Soothill’s Translation And Interpretation Of Miao Fa Lian Hua Jing

Miao Fa Lian Hua Jing, one of the most influential Mahayana sutras in Chinese Buddhist history, has ever been crowned as “The Gospel of Half Asia”. Its translated texts have been widely propagated for its close accordance with Chinese traditional culture. Through a careful investigation, the author finds that a great number of scholars have conducted a series of studies on the translations of Miao Fa Lian Hua Jing, most of which are on its Chinese translated texts with fewer on its English texts. As a professional Sinologist, not a mere Protestant Missionary, William Soothill must have handled his rendering of Miao Fa Lian Hua Jing in a distinctive way, which prompts the author to study. With the methodologies of translator-centered theory of Translation History Study as well as Imagology of Comparative Literature-Self and Other, this thesis, from the angle of the translator?s identity no longer as a mere Protestant Missionary but as a professional Sinologist, aims at piercing into his true motivation of translating Miao Fa Lian Hua Jing, unraveling his inclination to forsake Christian bias by translating it in a more objective, accurate and concise way and debunking the fact that he endeavored to study and interpret Chinese Buddhist Classics for the sake of the western learners? better study and understanding of Chinese Buddhist culture so as to foster a harmonious interconnection between Chinese religious culture and that of the West.