On The Representation Of Buddhist Adn Daoist Images In Arthur Waley’s English Version Of Xiyou Ji

Xiyou Ji,as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature,mainly tells a story that after experienced eighty-one calamities with the help and company of his four disciples,Tang Sanzang had finally fetched the Buddhist scriptures and returned to cultivate and enlighten the secular people.There are voluminous contents about Confucianism,Buddhism and Daoism in this book and the thoughts such as“three religions in one”,preaching Buddhism and degrading Daoism,and so on have aroused great attention among generations of scholars.In the year 1942,George Allen& Unwin Ltd.published Arthur Waley’s English version of Xiyou Ji,Monkey,which,although criticized by some scholars because its deletion has seriously weakened the literary value and religious elements of the original work,caters to the background of the times and the psychological needs of western readers and has achieved great success in Xiyou Ji’s journey to the West.Imagology belongs to Comparative Literature,which mainly studies how the image variation happened in the transmitting process.It focuses on process rather than result.The observer,the other and the foreign image are the core concepts of its research area,which means that it pays large attention to how the variation happened under the observer’s observation and explanation of the other and how ingrained images and national stereotypes had been produced.Today,under the trend of the interdisciplinary research,the combination between Imagology and translation study gains greater attention.With the interdisciplinary integration of translation study and Imagology,this thesis takes Arthur Waley’s English translation of Xiyou Ji-Monkey as the research object to study the representation of Buddhist and Daoist images from intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of Imagology,taking into account the factors of specific social backgrounds and times,the translator himself,and religious backgrounds,and finally comes to the following conclusions: first,Waley’s translation,though unfaithful and inaccurate,catered to the demands of the times and readers,and thus obtains wide popularity and success in terms of acceptance.Second,Waley’s translation aims to highlight the heroic spirit of individuals’ fighting against evil spirits and demons,which entails Waley’s literary expectation to defeat fascism and win peace rather than to preach Buddhism and Daoism.Third,Waley’s translation did not accurately represent the main Buddhist and Daoist images,and failed to reflect the theme embodied in Xiyou Ji,i.e.,to promote Buddhism and achieve Buddhism from Daoism.Fourth,Waley’s translation presented Buddhism in terms of Christianity and ignored Daoism,which can be told by the large number of Christian terms and images appeared in his version.It is also the typical manifestation of domestication and one of the most important reasons for its popularity among western readers.