The Influence Of The Translators' Cultural Identity On Their Translations

This dissertation intends to explore a minor corner of the study of cultural translation through a research on how translators' cultural identity influences their translations. In this research, two translators, the 19^th century British missionary and sinologist James Legge and current Chinese scholar and philosopher D.C. Lau, and their English translations of Lun Yu are under study.In the past two decades, researches on Lun Yu and its English translations have been flourishing, but most of them concentrated on studies of particular translations, key terms translation or the translators, not enough attention has been paid to the question how the distinctive translations occurred in connection with the translators' cultural identity.The approach adopted in this dissertation is comparative texts analysis. By the comparison between selected texts from the two translated versions of Lun Yu and analysis of James Legge and D.C. Lau's specific cultural identity, the author examined the question from three aspects: the role that translators' translating purpose plays in their application of translating strategies; the influence of their religious and political background on their interpretation of cultural messages; and the impact of their original cultures' world views and modes of thinking on their linguistic preferences.The discussion leads to a final conclusion that a translator can not escape his cultural identity, the various components of his cultural identity always play some sort of role in his choices of translation.