A Comparative Study On Three English Versions Of Tao Te Ching--From The Perspective Of Post-colonial Feminism

As the earliest and most complete philosophical work in China, Tao Te Ching employs succinct yet recondite language to convey abstruse Taoism which is not only exerts far-reaching influence on logic and psychology of Chinese culture and society, but provides much inspiration for western scholars. Tao Te Ching has been extensively studied, interpreted and translated all over the world since the 16th century. With different English versions emerging in an endless stream, scholars have embarked on studying them with the aid of reception theory, Skopos theory, translator's subjectivity and hermeneutic philosophy and so on. But few analyses are made in the light of post-colonial feminism. Deriving from post-colonialism and feminism, post-colonial feminism exposes the unfair relationship among powers and explores better ways to make inferior voice visible and puts"race","gender"and"class"into consideration to better interpret the living status of women in inferior culture.A large number of feminine images and similes can be found in Tao Te Ching,so we need to contemplate how to treat these expressions in the process of translation. The author shows great interest in this issue and employs post-colonial feminism theory to analyze three English versions and interpret feminine images in this book. Three versions are as follows: One is rendered by Arthur Waley, whose version is widespread in the west; one by Stephen Mitchell, who agrees to make feminine images visible; and the third one by Wang Rong pei & Puffenberger.This paper will not define Tao Te Ching as a feminist text and has no intention to justify which one is better or worse. The author sincerely hopes that this thesis can help researchers study English translation from a new perspective and attract more people to make contributions to the transmission of Chinese classics all over the world.