A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Lun Yu From The Perspective Of The Context Of Culture In Translation

Lun Yu (The Analects), as one of the most prominent Confucian Classics, covers a wide scope of subjects such as philosophy, education, politics, moral cultivation, literature and arts. It has a great and profound influence on the formation of the Chinese people's identity and inherence from over two thousand and five hundred years ago. Owing to its vitality in Confucian works, the translation of Lun Yu (The Analects), especially its English translating, has become one of the most important accesses for the westerners to know about the traditional Chinese culture and also an important cross-culture communication between occidental and oriental worlds.During the past twenty years, scholars, professors, and doctors at home and abroad have studied the English versions of Lun Yu(The Analects) from various perspectives, namely the diversity of translated versions, retranslation, the translator's subjectivity, cultranslation while a few of them study it from the perspective of context theory. Based on the context theory originated from the social-anthropologist Malinowski's research, the present thesis analyses the contextual cultural factors in the source text of Lun Yu (The Analects). Then, the thesis adopts a classification method to define and categorize the factors of cultural context interweaved in Lun Yu (The Analects) and attempts to perform a comparative study on its two English versions, respectively by English sinologist Arthur Waley and D.C. Lau (Professor Liu Dianjue).The main factors of cultural context emerged in the English versions of Lun Yu (The Analects) are classified into following categories, namely the conceptual cultural context, the social cultural context, the substantial cultural context, the religion cultural context, the artistic cultural context and some other cultural factors. This thesis mainly focuses on the five main contextual factors. After an analysis of the cases, the thesis finds out that the culture contexts in Lun Yu (The Analects) are subjective, dynamic, translation-resistant, and also possess a character of dialogism. From the case studies in each category, the thesis sums up the translation strategies, by which the translator achieves the contextual appropriateness, furthermore, an excellent target text.Then this thesis points out that the duality elements in translation such as free translation versus literal translation, foreignization versus domestication, source text-oriented versus target text-oriented, necessity versus adequacy usually lead the translator to an extreme situation or bring the translator into a dilemma. All the seemingly oppositional concepts exist in translation due to the neglects of the context in which the translation carries out, and the social circumstances in which translation activities are executed, and by whom the translation is done, and for whom the translation is.Contextual appropriateness, as a quality assessment of translation, can adjust and mediate the controversy situation caused by the duality elements in translation, and cast an enlightment to the field of translation critic. Meanwhile, translators should strive to find out the appropriateness point that can help the translator attain a balance situation among all the factors of context of culture.