An Empirical Study Of Retranslation Phenomenon Of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Reception theory is concerned with the relationship between the reader and text, focusing on the reader's understanding, response and reception of the text. Due to its resemblance to translation studies in research object and academic domain, reception theory, which was originally considered a methodological branch in literature research, has been more and more applied to translation studies. In translation studies, reception theory puts great emphasis on the text-reader relationship. As the core concepts of reception theory, horizon of expectations, proposed by Hans Robert Jauss, refers to readers'aesthetic expectations and mental assumptions in accordance with their life and experiences before reading; and indeterminacy, advanced by Wolfgang Iser believes that there are"gaps"or"blanks"in all texts, and the existence of the"gaps"or"blanks"and the"indeterminacy"in the text and the negation of the reader's original horizon of expectations provoke and stimulate readers to use their imaginations to fill and to concretize them.In literary translation, each translator as a reader has his own horizon of expectations and interpretation of the indeterminacies. Then, he/she has to test the translation from the perspective of the potential readers to achieve the fusion of horizons. It results in the different interpretations of the indeterminacies existing in the original. Certainly, the phenomenon of retranslation will be inevitable.It is a common phenomenon that different translators make different translations of a work. Especially in literary translation, people always notice the existence of multiple versions of the same masterpiece. Why do people need retranslation? Obviously, it is neither a waste of resources nor just a simple repetition. As far as retranslation phenomenon is concerned, some theorists have noticed it. But most studies are concerned with the study of individual retranslated version and problems in the retranslating practice, while leaving theoretical and empirical explanations undiscussed. Moreover, little work has been undertaken to conduct the research of reception theory and retranslation studies with great amount of data. Inspired by their studies the author of this thesis will go further for empirical explanations from the reception theory to explain the phenomenon of retranslation.With the aim in view, this thesis tries to do a tentative research on the importance of retranslation of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, a treasury of both China and the rest of the world. It is widely accepted as a masterpiece on strategy, referenced by generals and theorists throughout history. For Chinese PLA men, it's very necessary to learn the profound insight in such a classic. As the oldest and most profound masterpiece on strategy of both China and the world, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is also one of the most important components in Chinese and the world civilizations. Not only Chinese people but also the people in other countries should get great benefit from it. So it is our responsibility to propagate such Chinese civilization. But it is hard to understand and translate because of its deep meaning, short sentence structure, concise wording and abstruse language, not only to foreigners, but to Chinese as well. Up to now, there hasn't been a version that is regarded as the best translation by all the readers at different times. Due to the ambiguity of language and complexity of the content, many "gaps" and "spots of indeterminacy" are left for interpretation, and various different translations have been produced. As time passes by, more and more spots of indeterminacy emerge, causing the translation to be quite different from the former ones.In this thesis, the author aims at explaining the importance of retranslation of Sun Tzu's The Art of War through two concepts of reception theory. One is readers'horizons of expectations, another is indeterminacy. In order to confirm the feasibility of these two concepts, the author of this thesis makes a case study by seeking the tendency of the acceptability of verses from the three translated versions, with a preliminary questionnaire and a questionnaire which are provided in the appendix part.The subjects in the study are 75 sophomores from the College of Basic Education for Commanding Officers of the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). They are all non-English major students and have received some training on Sun Tzu's The Art of War in Chinese. At first, in order to prove the representativeness of the three chosen translated versions, a preliminary questionnaire was administered in Chinese to such cadets. Nine questions were included in the preliminary questionnaire, which were chosen according to four perspectives. They were the content and thoughts of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, the influence and application of it, the famous commentaries on it, and the history of English translating it. On the basis of the preliminary questionnaire, over 65% students thought that they wanted to read the translated version of Sun Tzu's The Art of War with the intensive military-orientation, and it was quite necessary for cadets to read such versions. It proved that British Captain E. F. Calthrop's revised version, M. A. Lionel Giles'version and Samuel B. Griffith's version were representative. Then, in order to explain that every classic has its indeterminacies and the blanks which provide the possibility for readers to perceive the literary work by their own expectations. Meanwhile, no literary work can be grasped as a whole because of indeterminacy. If we want to achieve its true meaning, the only way is by retranslation. The subjects were required to finish the survey assigned to them with a time limit of 2 hours. This survey included 16 verses from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, which were chosen according to the three thoughts within the classic, the cautions against war, the strategic thoughts and the dialectical thinking. After doing so, the frequencies of the subjects'choices were classified and calculated. From the frequency distribution, we obtained the empirical conclusions.And finally, to verify these empirical conclusions, all the data collected were examined through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 17.0) statistical analysis system. Procedures as descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA test have been adopted.After analyzing, 75% students choose the translated verses of Griffith's version as their preference. And the results of the investigation confirm the assumption of the author of this thesis. It shows that Griffith's version can satisfy the readers'horizon of expectations. It is not only because Griffith was a retired U.S. Marine Brigadier General and a recognized authority on Mao Zedong at the time, but also because this translation has become the most influential and most widely circulated translated version, and is comparatively the latest one among the three versions. The subjects show lower preference for Lionel Giles'version and E. F. Calthrop's version. For one thing, even though Lionel Giles was born in China and was the leading sinologist at his time, his knowledge on war was limited, so some words he chose understated the significance of war. For another, Calthrop's retranslation provided useful reference for later translators, but his knowledge of Chinese was"far too scanty to fit him to grapple with the manifold difficulties of Sun Tzu"(Giles, 1910:viii). In these two versions, there must be some indeterminacies for later translators to reinterpret. Meanwhile, it proves that within Griffith's version and Calthrop's revised version, the mean difference is significant. But the mean difference is not distinct within Giles'version and Calthrop's revised version, because there was an interval of two years between the publication of these two versions. And, as the first two translators of the English versions, Calthrop's retranslation provided useful reference for later translators. Moreover, Calthrop and Giles had little material for reference. According to the research, on the one hand, the author of this thesis applies the perspective of reception theory to focus on the discussion of differences in the three versions of Sun Tzu's The Art of War for the justification of the importance of retranslation. On the other hand, it is very helpful and useful to find which English version/versions will be more proper for Chinese cadets to understand Sun Tzu's The Art of War both in Chinese and in English well. Then, it will give a great help for cadets to know more important strategies and tactics in both China and western countries from a different angle. Meanwhile, the retranslation of Sun Tzu's The Art of War can disseminate our Chinese culture more accurately and reinforce the cultural exchange and cooperation between China and the other foreign countries. Let the world know more about Chinese culture, let Chinese culture advance towards the world. Moreover, it is a very important channel for our country to enhance the soft power and receive more attention in the world.