A Study Of The English Translation Of Tao Te Ching From The Perspective Of Susan Bassnett’s Cultural Translation Theory

Traditionally, translation is regarded as an activity of a linguistic transformationfrom one language into another. With the development of translation studies, more andmore scholars begin to take culture into consideration in the translation process,among which Susan Bassnett is the most outstanding one. She believes that translationis the communication of both intra-culture and inter-culture instead of a pure linguisticbehavior. Translation equivalence is the cultural functional equivalence between thesource text and the target text. Susan Basenett’s cultural translation theory has pushedthe translation studies a step forward.As a canon of Taoism and a brilliant literary masterpiece, Tao Te Ching hasalways been a fascination to the readers both at home and abroad. In the thesis, theauthor attempts to conduct a comparative study on the cultural translation of twoEnglish versions of Tao Te Ching from the perspective of Susan Bassnett’s culturaltranslation theory. The two selected English versions of Tao Te Ching are produced byArthur Waley and Gu Zhengkun, for the reason that they are of different nationalitiesand historical periods. The author assumes that the different cultural and historicalcontexts of the two translators are bound to influence their adoption of translationstrategies. The author creatively divides the culture in Tao Te Ching into three kinds:material culture, behavioral culture and spiritual culture. With Susan Bassenett’scultural translation theory as the guidance, the paper makes a detailed analysis of thecultural translation related to each kind of culture. At last, the author draws aconclusion that Arthur Waley mainly adopts the foreignization strategy while GuZhengkun uses both foreignization and domestication strategies. The adoption oftranslation strategies are decided by their translation motivations and cultural contexts,for Waley aims to conduct a “historical translation” of Tao Te Ching, while GuZhengkun attempts to produce a version that is accessible to the readers both at homeand abroad.