A Comparatively Study On The Compensation In The English Versions Of Analects

Compensation always accompanies with translation. In other words, where there is translation, there is compensation. In China, the first record of translation, which was more than 1300 years ago, is about sutra. However, there have been few studies on compensation since then."Analects" records the words and behavior of Confucius and his students. It is a Chinese cultural classic, and influences Chinese culture tremendously. "Analects" was finished between Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period. It's mainly recordation. The language inside is simple but general, and in a spoken way. Some sentences are vivid, enlightening and philosophical. Some sentences draw a vivid image just by using a few words. However, it also brings a lot of difficulties on the translation of "Analects". Therefore, it requires to use a lot of compensation for this translation. This book has comparatively a lot of different kinds of translations since being introduced to western countries in the 1770's.Compensation is an indispensable translation way, but the study on that hasn't composed a theory yet. Under these considerations, this paper is going to collect and analyze recent studies inside and outside China on Compensation. So far, the definition of compensation is still not clear and sorts of compensation is also not clarified. Some researchers think compensation is just for the lose of meaning; some researchers, however, take sound, effect, rhetoric etc. in compensation. On classifying compensation, some researchers divided it from the aspect of practice, so they divided it into connotation, adding meaning etc, some of them even put literal translation inside compensation; some researchers divided it from the aspect of position, and therefore classified it into the sort of compensation in a parallel location and compensation in a displaced location.This paper will redefine compensation, and will divide it into the compensation of meaning and expression method. In addition, this paper also holds the idea that it is necessary to keep the principles of necessity and quality. That is to say Compensation should only happen when it is needed and it should be related with the original text. Meanwhile, the compensated text should not conflict with the meaning of original text. The style, effect and function also should keep the same as the original text if it is compensated within the translation; if it is outside text, as connotation, the compensation should fully transmit the information contained by the original text.By comparing and analyzing different English versions of "Analects", this paper is going to do systematic study about compensation.