"The Absentee Presence": A Study Of Deconstructive Strategy In The English Translation Of The Four Versions Of "Wen Xin Diao Long. Shen Si"

How to translate a Chinese canon in English context felicitously? Academically, this issue as a whole is recently coming into vogue,and people's opinions are divergent on such a complex and controversial issue.In my point of view,translators should try to protect the distinct cultural elements in a canon like Wen Xin Diao Long from losing,being misread,and distortion in translating as possible.And deconstructive translation theory can be regarded as a better,if it is not the best,way to realize it.But,how to translate a canon like Wen Xin Diao Long with a myriad of distinct elements into English without significant cultural loss as possible?Moving on to the case of the canon Wen Xin Diao Long that was born in the end of Qi Dynasty enjoying a significant status in Chinese literary history as one of the greatest pieces on literary critic theory,it is meaningful to discuss the translations of the distinct literary terms and sentences by various translators' hands.On the other hand,since the last century,deconstruction has had a great influence on modern translation theories.It has broken the illusion that there is possible to be a steady translation from original language to target language.Particularly,involving a unique literary term,there is unlikely,an ultimate translation,but only the interpretation's fragments disseminated in a version,or even,among various versions.Nonetheless,in the numerous studies on Wen Xin Diao Long,including the overseas studies,few of them has analyzed the translation of the key terms,for example "Shen Si" in the passage of "Shen Si" which is able to be treated as the outline of literary creation theory in Wen Xin Diao Long..Thus in this thesis,the four strategies of deeonstruction translation theory:differance,trace,dissemination,and supplement,are employed to analyze the terms and distinct sentences through tracing of the original meanings, thoughts and comparing them with relevant western terms to demonstrate that deconstruction translation theory can be considered as an outstanding way to translate the ancient Chinese discourses,and can contribute to the re-building of Chinese literary discourse in English context.In chapter one,there is a briefly introduction about the text Wen Xin Diao Long and its relevant researches,then the methodologies,assumptions and contributions of this thesis will also be generally stated.In chapter two,there is a description on how the key term "Shen Si" in those four versions is translated by the four different translators,and also an analysis on the topic to see if translators have effectively achieved the translation or misread its connotations from the perspectives of deconstructive translation theory.In chapter three,separately,there are close studies on the translations of several sentences containing distinct connotations and syntactic structures like the definition sentence:"古人雲,形在江海之上,心存魏闕之下,神思之謂也" from the aspect of supplement and the author of the thesis concludes that since employing allusions serves as the characteristic of ancient Chinese parallel prose,when translating such a sentence,translators need to adopt footnotes or further interpretation as supplement to present the cultural factors between lines;and "陶鈞文思,貴在虚靜,疏瀹五藏,澡雪精神" from the aspect of trace and the author of the thesis concludes that since the ancient Chinese parallel prose is inter-textual,not only the inter-textual original text but also translation versions exist as the traces of the original meanings and translators should try to present the distinct structure in translation;the next discussion is on the translation of the sentence such as:"文之思也,其神遠矣,寂然凝慮,思接千載" from the aspect of dissemination and the author of the thesis gets the conclusion that translators should disseminate the variety of original meaning both in a single version's context and among versions;the final analysis is on the sentence "至於思表纖旨,文外曲致,言所不追,筆固知止" from the aspect of differance and the author of the thesis concludes that just as the words' self-telling translators should differance the subtle connotations in the original for that is the way to give the original text after-life in target language.Chapter four is the conclusion to sum up the translations analyzed in the above chapters with a complete traces' map reasserting that the original meaning is disseminated in and among versions into fragments serving as the supplements for each other.And the significance of the deconstructive translation in the context of the communication between China and the west in literary theory is pointed out also. Then this thesis' limitations and questions to be furthered discussed are expressed in this chapter.