A Contrastive Study Of Three English Versions Of Lunyu From The Perspective Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Lunyu is one of the brilliant Chinese classics and plays a very important part in China's literary history. In fact, Lunyu has been gaining more and more popularity from across the world up to now and its translation has evolved through quite a long history. Many scholars have already studied the English translations of Lunyu from various points of view and made great achievements. This thesis, based upon that, uses Gadamer's three concepts"historicality of understanding","fusion of horizons"and the"principle of effective-history"for a contrastive study of the three English versions of Lunyu translated respectively by James Legge, Arthur Waley and Charles Muller. The concept"historicality of understanding"demonstrates that the differences among the three English versions are mainly caused by the historicality of the text and that of the translator. The concept of"fusion of horizons"shows that a translation's"deformation"or"distortion"of the original text is in fact a result of the fusions of horizons, i.e. fusions of the translator's horizon, the ST's horizon, the source culture's horizon and the target culture's horizon. It is also the fusions of such horizons that contribute to the variations of the translations of the same ST. However, thanks to the shared horizon (i.e. the horizon shared by the translator and the target culture), the different versions of the same ST tend to share a lot of understanding and interpretations, despite the differences among them and the various forms of"deformation"and"distortion". Facts prove that a translator can create a version acceptable to his target readers only by basing his translation on his shared horizon. That also justifies the necessity for a retranslator to use the previous translations properly for reference. However, a successful retranslator always gives priority to originality and innovation in his translation. Fortunately, the"principle of effective-history"sheds new light on retranslations of Lunyu by enabling us to find out from it new sources of understanding unexpected by the previous translators. Thus, this principle in truth provides some insight into retranslation studies, especially into our detection of the novelty and originality in a retranslation.On the whole, Gadamer's concepts of"historicality of understanding"and"fusion of horizons"lay a sound theoretical foundation for the diversification of the English versions and for the unavoidable"deformation"and"distortion"in translating, whereas the"principle of effective-history"enables a retranslator to bring some novelty and innovation to his translation on the basis of a good understanding of the ST and its previous translation(s). In a word, the"newness"of a retranslation is brought about partly by"historicality of understanding"and the clashes among various horizons, and partly by the novelty the retranslator creates in the process of translating. Therefore, Gadamer's three concepts are of great significance to the study of translation, and retranslation in particular.