A Hermeneutic Study On Different English Versions Of Tao Te Ching

Tao Te Ching, the earliest Taoist philosophical text in China, is of profound significance in Chinese society, both in its philosophical and religious influences and its secular application to everyday life. Since its first English translation by the Englishman John Chalmers in 1868, it has received great attention around the world, especially in Britain and America. In the last century, Tao Te Ching was translated and published successively, which makes it the most widely translated text except the Bible. Because of this, the author of this thesis has developed great interest in the translation of Tao Te Ching. In the thesis, she intends to explore the English translation of this Chinese classic from the perspective of Gadamer's hermeneutics.In light of philosophical hermeneutics, translating is a process of understanding and interpreting. According to Gadamer, the translator, first as a reader, then an interpreter, has his/her own"preconstruction"and"fore-understanding"before understanding, what is more, his/her understanding and are active. For Gadamer, fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception are different social and psychological unities of different translators, which result from different social and cultural contexts. and it is these different unities that constitute the different interpretations of the same text.After combining Gadamer's hermeneutics and the evaluation of the relationship between hermeneutics and translation, the thesis further analyzes the feasibility and desirability of translation study in the scope of hermeneutics in China today. The author thinks that the prime principles of hermeneutics provide a valuable angle for the translation study of Chinese traditional classics. She also points out that it is particularly meaningful to study translation from the ideas of Gadamer, that is, from the historical interpretation and fusion of horizons.In this thesis, the author mainly chooses four English versions of Tao Te Ching which can represent the lapse of time as well as regional diversity. With the help of the two concepts of"historicity of understanding"and"fusion of horizon"in hermeneutics theory, she analyzes some samples from the four versions. Instead of evaluating the relative gains and losses in these English versions, the thesis only intends to probe how different social and cultural contexts influence the translator's"fore-understanding".The thesis argues that absolute definitive translation of the TTC (hereafter acronymed as TTC) is neither possible nor necessary for the following reasons. Firstly, all the translations feature their strong points, which are, however, accompanied by drawbacks and no translation seems to be the best one. Yet every kind of translation is the product a certain social context, which reflect the translator's horizon as well as his interpretation of the source text. Therefore it serves a certain group of researchers, regulators and general readers. Secondly, understanding of the TTC can neither be unified, and even Chinese experts on the TTC cannot agree with each other, now and past. Since understanding is a prerequisite of translation, there can never be an absolutely correct translation to fully interpret all the profound meanings implied in the source text.It concludes that Tao Te Ching, like an abundant mineral resource, can not be fully excavated by a single interpretation. Furthermore, one version of Tao Te Ching can not satisfy the need of every reader in every period. Only through reading many versions of it can we gradually get closer and closer to the original meaning of the work. This conclusion provides a more scientific approach to the study of English versions of TTC.