Study On The Translation Of Indeterminate Meaning In Four English Versions Of Dao De Jing From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

As a philosophical masterpiece as well as a literary classic, Dao De Jing exerts far-reaching influence at home and abroad. However, its near-poetic language and indeterminacy of meaning result in people’s vague understanding and also pose great challenges to translators. Based on Reception Aesthetics, the author of this thesis conducts a comparative study on the four English versions of Dao De Jing to explore the four translators’ translation of indeterminate meaning.Close reading is adopted in this thesis. Under the guidance of Reception Aesthetics, the author conducts close reading to the four English versions of Dao De Jing, managing to demonstrate the influence of readers’ reception on translators’ different choices of translational strategies, hence the analysis of the text is based on the theory. Besides, comparison and analysis are also applied to the thesis. The author selects a large quantity of examples from the four English versions, compares and analyzes their different translation of indeterminate meaning at the lexical, image and philosophical levels, so as to provide reference and a broader perspective for the later translation of classic works.Under the guidance of Reception Aesthetics, the author of this thesis selects the four English versions of Dao De Jing respectively by James Legge, Arthur Waley, Lin Yutang and Xu Yuanzhong as the research objects, so as to explore the translation of indeterminate meaning in the four English versions of Dao De Jing. The introduction part of this thesis includes the brief introduction to the indeterminacy of translation, the theoretical framework, the literature review and the research objectives, methodology and significance. Chapter One is the research on the translation of indeterminate meaning at the lexical level and the three words of "Dao","Wu Wei" and "Tian" are taken as the examples for the comparative research and analysis. Chapter Two focuses on the translation of indeterminate meaning at the image level with images of Dao, water and sage as the examples. In Chapter Three, by selecting the state-running principles, the law of unity of opposites and the outlook on development as the examples, the author investigates the translation of indeterminate meaning at the philosophical level. Therefore, the following conclusions are reached:a translated work does not present all the information to readers; instead, it is filled with uncertainty and blank of meaning, which serve as the bridge connecting the creativity of the work and the readers’reception. In addition, in the translation process, translators should take into account the readers’"horizon of expectations"(Jauss1982:27), namely, their social experience, aesthetic tendencies and reception ability, so as to present to readers the unique beauty of Chinese.