A Comparative Study Of The Three Versions Of The Analects Of Confucius From The Perceptive Of Readers' Reception

The Analects is the classic of Confucianism, and the intellectual monument of Chinese civilization. Confucius's image in the West is that of China and Chinese civilization in miniature. (Jin,2000:vii). The English versions of The Analects are numerous and the methods the translators employed varied. With the adoption of the "reader-oriented" approach, The Analects comes the problems as to what extent the translators should bear in mind the acceptability of the target language readers. The thesis selects as its subject three English translations of The Analects translated by Amoy Ku, Auther Waley and Edward Slingerland, and then inquires into the degree of taking the target readers into consideration, based on the Germany Reception Theory.The thesis is divided into five parts. The Introduction Chapter is a brief description of the research background, the research aim, the main structure and the significance of the paper. Chapter Two demonstrates the research subject, reviews the history of the English versions of The Analects from the 19th century up to the present, and outlines the previous researches on the three versions. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of the relations between the Reception theory and literary translation. The main body of the paper is Chapter Four. From the linguistic and cultural perspectives, three English versions are discussed on the basis of the Reception Theory. With a great number of examples, the author elaborates on readers reception. The Conclusion Chapter provides suggestions for further research.Rather than ranking these three translation versions, the aim of the paper is to present that the acceptability of the English versions of The Analects varies in scope depends on the degree of taking the target readers into consideration. The paper concludes that Ku over-considers the target readers by means of an improper shift between the original meaning and namely similar western theological terms; Waley's version strictly employs the formal equivalence, yet under-considers his readers. Slingerland realizes that the accurate presentation of the original message is significant to a translated version in the same way that the readers'acceptability is to the version, so his version is faithful to the original, more importantly he adds note to the cultural-loaded words. Hopefully, this research project can offer a novel sight.