A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Lunyu From Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Lunyu, as one Confucian classic, covers a wide range of subjects such as Chinese traditional philosophy, politics, education, moral cultivation, literature, art and so on. For more than two thousand years, it has exerted significant and profound influence on shaping identity of Chinese people. Therefore, it has been regarded as Chinese Bible by western scholars.Modern English versions of Lunyu influenced by contemporary studies of sinology in west emerged in the late of1990s. The modern versions are more in line with the new age, because when the translators did their translations, they not only absorbed the essence of traditional versions, but also took features of the modern age and contemporary readers’aesthetic expectation into account. The emergence of the new versions brought fresh flavor and vigor to the studies of Lunyu’s English versions.The study of Lunyu’s translation in this thesis is based on two modern English versions. One is Simen Leys’ and the other is co-translated by Roger T. Ames&Henry RosemontThe guiding theory is the Skopostheorie. As a core theory of German functionalist approaches, Skopostheorie holds that "the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (Skopos) of the overall translational action"(Nord27). That is, the translation purpose determines the translation strategies and methods. Skopostheorie breaks confinement of equivalence-based theory and puts forward a brand new sense for translation criticism. According to Skopostheorie, the quality of the target text is not determined by the standard that whether the target text is faithful or equivalent to the source text but whether the translators’ purposes could be achieved adequately.Based on the three rules of Skopostheorie, this thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the two modern English versions through an enormous number of case studies. This thesis is divided into six parts including introduction and conclusion. The first part is the introduction which presents the research background, research purpose, research questions and research significance.Chapter one is literature review in which some typical studies of Lunyu’s translation are reviewed such as the studies from the perspectives of culture, postcolonialism, hermeneutics, Confucian concepts and so on. This part also points out the limitations of the previous studies and the necessity of the present study.Chapter two introduces the development of Skopostheorie and centers the statement on the basic aspects of Skopostheorie, including translation brief, the three rules of Skopotheorie and the relationship between them. Adequacy---the standard of evaluation is also discussed.Chapter three is textual analysis. In this chapter, the comparative studies of the two versions are carried out in the light of translation brief, skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule.In Chapter four, the author of this thesis sums up the major differences of two versions on the basis of the comparative study in chapter three. In terms of translation style, Leys intends to present popular, terse, and elegant style, while Ames and Rosement are inclined to keep the original language style of Lunyu, so the language of their version is relatively abstruse and profound. When it comes to translation strategies, domestication strategy is employed in Leys’ version aiming to make the target text more readable and acceptable to the western readers. On the contrary, in order to retain original cultural flavor and philosophical thought of the source text, Ames employs foreignization mostly. In terms of the realization of the three rules, both the two versions adequately realize their skopos. However, guiding by different translation purposes, Leys’ version conform to coherence rule better and Ames’ version is more coherent with fidelity rule. Finally, this chapter explores the causes for the differences between the two versions from perspectives of Skopos Theory.Chapter five is conclusion. This part summarizes the significant findings of this study, and presents the limitations of the study. Meanwhile, the implications of this study is offered.