The Study On The Translating Differences Of Lun Yu Between Chinese And Westerner From The Perspective Of Cultural Preference

As we all know, Chinese culture has a long history of more than five thousand years. It is deeply rooted and of long standing. As a representative of the eastern culture, she has not only a profound impact on the development of the Asian culture, but also the world's culture. Lun Yu-as the most brilliant pearl in the treasure house of Chinese culture-has given Chinese descendants wisdom and enlightenment with its profound thought and connotation.Lun Yu is one of the Confucian classics. According to Ban Gu's record in Han Shu Wen Zhi (《汉书·文志》) of Eastern Han Dynasty, "Lun Yu means the answers that Confucius have given to his disciples and contemporary people's questions and their remarks with Confucius as well. At that time, each disciple had those remarks in mind respectively. When Confucius passed away, they collected and compiled these remarks together, which is so called Lun Yu." Since the Song Dynasty, there was a saying "A half volume of LunYu can rule the world". In Jan. 1988, the first international conference for the Nobel prize-winners held in Paris, after four days' discussion, 75 participants put forward 16 conclusions "for the 21st century" as the subject, an important one of which is "if human beings want to survive, we must learn from the Confucius' wisdom dates back to 25 centuries ago." Obviously, Lun Yu not only has a far-reaching impact on Chinese civilization, but also the whole world's civilization.So far from the end of the 16th century, Lun Yu has been translated into a variety of languages and continuously introduced to the world. Its translation, especially English translation, has been an important way for western countries to know the Chinese culture, and also an important bridge for cross-cultural communication between the east and the west. Many Chinese and western scholars have dedicated themselves to the English translation of Lun Yu. However, translation is a human communicative activity which has a distinct cultural feature. Because of the cultural difference between the east and the west, Chinese and western scholars, as representative of their own culture, while translating such a Chinese classic, will surely be influenced by their native culture, thus resulting in their translating differences. This dissertation has chosen two representative translation versions of Lun Yu from one westerner and one Chinese respectively to explore such difference from both macroscopical and microscopical angles to illustrate that translator's identification with his native culture and his translation strategies are closely related. Owing to the influence of his native culture, a translator usually identifies with his own culture, consciously or unconsciously, and applies some strategies to his renderings. So it is Chinese and western translators' cultural preference to their native cultures that has caused their translating differences of Lun Yu.The main body of this dissertation is divided into five parts. The first part is introduction. First of all, it has given a brief introduction on Confucius' biography, ideology and status. And then the reflection of Confucius' ideology-Lun Yu, its content, historical status in China and its role in cross-cultural communication between the east and the west. There is also an introduction on the research versions in this dissertation. And the selected versions in this dissertation are the most representative two among all of the versions from the eastern and western translators. One comes from a western translator-James Legge and the other comes from a Chinese translator-Ku Hung-Ming. Finally, the research history on the translation of Lun Yu and the main innovation of this dissertation are introduced.The second part has introduced culture, translation as well as their relationship systemically so as to illuminate that translation is a kind of cross-cultural communicative activity. Translator, as the representative of culture, plays an important role in the translating process. Being influenced by their native cultural context, consciously or unconsciously, a translator's translating process can also be regarded as the process of his preference to his own culture.The third part, from a macroscopical angle, that is the whole discourse, to make a comparative study on the differences between the Chinese and westerner's translation of Lun Yu. Because Chinese and western translators identify with their native culture, thus they consciously choose those translation strategies that in favor of promoting their own culture, which precisely meets the requirement of Skopostheorie. It is based on the purpose of the preference to their own culture that has caused the differences between Chinese and western translator's different arrangements of the whole discourse, such as language style, discourse coherence, treatment of proper names and their different choices of translation strategies.The fourth part, from a microscopical angle, that is lexical and syntactic levels, to make a comparative study on the differences between the Chinese and westerner's translation of Lun Yu. Chinese and western translator are from different cultural contexts, so they will certainly be influenced by their native culture unconsciously, such as the different characteristics of thinking patterns, value systems and attitudes towards religion, which all reflect differences in translation. In fact, this is also the realization of the preference to their own culture.The last part talks about cultural clash and cultural fusion. Through the comparative study on the translating differences between Chinese and westerner' translation of Lun Yu, this paper aims at illustrating that translation is a cross-cultural communicative activity, because of the cultural difference between the east and the west, so cultural conflict is inevitable. However, with the constant contact and penetration between eastern and western cultures and the translator brings his role as the mediator between the east and the west into full play, thus cultural fusion is an inevitable trend.The ultimate goal and significance of this dissertation is to extend the study on Lun Yu's translation to the field of cross-cultural communication. Translation means communication, communication can't be separated from culture. Because of culture's complexity and cultural difference between the east and the west, which make Chinese-English translation and cultural representation become an arduous task. On the one hand, the translator should not only be familiar with the source and target languages, but also be familiar with the source and target languages' cultures. Only when the translator has not only bilingual competence but also bicultural and even multi-cultural knowledge can they acclimatize themselves to the need of conducting effective communication between different cultures and represent the source language's culture as much as possible. Therefore, only through Chinese and western translators' constant improvement on the understanding of source and target languages' cultures as well as their continuous practice and efforts to shorten the distance of the cultural difference between the east and the west, can the profound Chinese culture in Lun Yu be shared by the people all over the world.