| Lao Tzu’s Taoism, a fine example of traditional Chinese culture, reflects simple yet deep philosophical thinking of the ancient Chinese. As its representative text, Tao Te Ching is one of the most translated Chinese classics. Taoism and Tao Te Ching have received great interest and broad dissemination in Thailand, a society of Southern (Theravada) Buddhism tradition in Southeast Asia with strong influences from Chinese and Indian cultures. There are29titles of translated texts of Tao Te Ching in formal publication. But Taoism and Tao Te Ching are foreign to the Thai culture in terms of language and ideas. This thesis (dissertation) attempts to make a panoramic review of Tao Te Ching’s Thai translations with the help of the theories such as Descriptive Translation Studies, Philosophical Hermeneutics and Reception Aesthetics. It introduces the history of Tao Te Ching’s translation in Thailand and features of the translated texts. It also selects six representative works for more focused analyses on the translation of core terminologies, characteristics of paratext and rendering of the source language style to shed light on how Thai scholars have interpreted and spread Taoist culture of Chinese origin in a country of Southern Buddhism tradition.First, The thesis tells the process whereby the concept of Tao is translated into Thai as "(?)" and admitted into Thai dictionaries. This establishment of the Tao concept in Thai signifies the formal acceptance of Taoism by the Thai public and its entry into the Thai language system. Then the thesis goes on to review the29translated texts of Tao Te Ching and summarizes their characteristics. On this basis six translations are selected for text analysis.In this part, the first analysis is on paratext. Although it is not formally established as a part of the translation theories, the author believes that the concept of paratext is very important or even essential for comparative analyses across multiple translated texts of a work and it can be incorporated into the category of Descriptive Translation Studies. From paratext we can find a lot about translators’ purpose of translations, methods of translation, understanding of the source text and aesthetic reception. Next the thesis studies the translations of some core Taoist concepts in different versions, e.g. Tao, De (Virtue), Wu-Wei(No-action) and Tian-Di(Heaven and Earth). The analysis reveals that Thai scholars in their Southern Buddhism context mainly use three approaches in translating cultural concepts of Chinese origin:1. transliteration, which ensures maximum retention of the original flavor and marks the acceptance of foreign culture;2. use of Sanskrit/Pali words, which tends to be quaint and elegant and may reflect translators’prejudices from their Southern Buddhism culture;3. explanatory translation, plain and easy to understand. All these approaches represent efforts made by Thai scholars to disseminate Chinese culture in their own ways through a process of fusion of horizons on the basis of their respective prejudices.Finally the thesis examines and compares how style is handled across the six Thai texts of Tao Te Ching. According to Reception Aesthetics, translators are first of all readers before they are authors. Because of its abstract language and a great deal of textual potential, Tao Te Ching has given rise to translated texts of various styles for different audiences. |
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