Chinese-English Translating Approaches To The Main Modes Of Metaphors In Tan Jing

As the only Chinese classics generally honored with the appellation sutra or scripture,Tan Jing has been regarded as the most influential,researched and quoted Buddhist canon which is worthy of being the "king of Zen classics".The Sixth Patriarch,Hui Neng has frequently preached the following doctrines in Tan Jing,such as “recognizing the original mind and seeing the nature”,“integrating the mind with wisdom” and “not writing and teaching others” etc.All the ideas in the sutra are of significant ideological and cultural values.Moreover,the discourse in Tan Jing has its own special interpretation,and the abstruse sense of Buddha dharma could not be elucidated in language,since the metaphorical expressions are often used to transmit the teachings of Ch’an Buddhism.Therefore,in order to advance the spread of Chinese Zen culture in the world and make foreign readers better understand the profound meanings of metaphors according to the mechanism of Buddhism and Ch’an,it is particularly necessary to study the English translation of metaphors in Tan Jing.As one of the most widely-spread and influential manuscripts,the Chinese Tsungpao version of Tan Jing is surely the source text in this study.Based on content analysis,the Chinese Tsungpao version as the source text is first input into Nvivo12 to get the main modes of metaphors in it,and then its three English versions including The Sixth Patriarch’s Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra translated by Bhiksuni Heng Yin,The Sutra of Hui-neng Grand Master of Zen by Thomas Cleary and The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch by John R.Mc Rae as the target texts are also input into Nvivo12 to find out the appropriate translating strategies for the main modes of metaphors by comparative reading of the above-mentioned target texts.From the perspective of the cultural identities of the translators,Bhiksuni Heng Yin is a great master of Ch’an,John R.Mc Rae is a distinguished scholar and Thomas Cleary is a cultural disseminator with a strong interest in Buddhism and Ch’an.In fact,the main modes of metaphors in Tan Jing are found out based on some theories on metaphor,and metaphor translating methods proposed by Peter Newmark are instructive to work out the general paradigms of the different Chinese-English translating approaches to the main modes of metaphors in Tan Jing by comparing the metaphors in the three target texts.Statistics from Nvivo12 show that there are three main modes of metaphors in Tan Jing which are conventional metaphor,allusive metaphor(including Sanskrit metaphor,allegorical metaphor and gatha metaphor),Ji-Feng Metaphor.And the corresponding translating approaches to the main modes of metaphors are literal translation,literal translation + notes,literal translation +quotation marks,Sanskrit substitution,converting metaphor to sense,transferring metaphor to simile,etc.Since the main modes of metaphors in the source text and Chinese-English translating approaches in the target texts have been comparatively analyzed and summarized,it is useful to improve the decoding of Tan Jing for foreign readers,provide reference strategies for the English translation of Chinese Buddhist scriptures and help the spread of Chinese Ch’an culture in the world.