A Contrastive Study On The Three English Versions Of Universal Love Of Mozi

Mozi was one of the most influential philosophers after Confucius,and was the founder of the Mohism. As the invaluable treasure inTraditional Chinese culture, the book Mozi is sparkling for its greatMohism, of which Universal Love is the bedrock. Therefore, the chapterof Universal Love is selected to be discussed in this thesis. Moreover, thisthesis brings its three English versions translated by Y. P. Mei (1929),Burton Waston (1963) and Wang Rongpei (2006) under a macrocross-cultural environment to make a contrastive study with the aim ofexploring the influence of ideology, poetics, and patronage in thetranslation activity of Mozi.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one firstly makes a briefintroduction of the man Mozi and his book, collects all the versions ofMozi and overviews previous studies on Mozi. Then it introduces the aimand significance of this thesis. Chapter two focuses on Lefevere’smanipulation theory which sheds some light on studying Mozi’s threeEnglish versions. Chapter three gives a more detailed elucidation on thethree translators’ diverse backgrounds, identities and some othersocial-cultural factors, and explores their motivation. Chapter fourcompares the three versions of Universal Love of Mozi from the angle ofthe three manipulative factors, emphasizing a thorough contrastivestudy on the adoption of translation strategy.Through the study on the three versions of Mozi, this thesis comes tothe conclusion as follows. As a famous philosopher, Mei’s meticulousscholarship was well reflected in his version of Mozi. Under the influenceof his sponsored publishing house and his readership being scholars, Meioften employed the foreignization strategy and was keen on choosinggrave and elegant words and complex sentence structures. Influencedby his personal experience and his patrons, Waston was determined to ensure high readability of his translation. His target readers were almostordinary readers, as a result, Waston’s translations are faithful to theoriginal texts with features of readability and high aesthetic value. Inaddition, as an English native speaker, Waston is adept at choice ofwords by using some authentic and proper sentence patterns, fixedphrases, and even some colloquialisms and slangs. Wang Rongpeiintegrated with the latest research of Mozi to correct some errors of theprevious versions, tried to retain the original text and adopted colloquialsentence patterns with formal words and expressions in order toaccelerate the spread of traditional Chinese culture.