Thick Translation: A Strategy Of Literary Orientation In Wang Hanchuan’s Chinese Translation Of The Bible

The Bible has values of theology, historiography and literature. The translatingand transmitting of the Bible is not only a process of doctrine transmission, but also aprocess of semantic regeneration to which the previous translators have madetremendous effort. Among them is the translation behavior of adding introduction andexplanatory materials in translation.The term "thick translation", put forward by the American scholar KwameAnthony Appiah, derives from "annotation". It refers to the translating strategy of thetranslator attempting to construct the translated text through interpreting andannotating in the culture of which its connotation is deep. For the translation of workswhich contain too many exotic elements, the pure contextual translating strategy onlycould not help achieve the goal of "expressiveness", therefore special translatingstrategy of thick translation has to be adopted to compensate the loss of the meaningof the original text, thus completing the translation process.With an eye to the Chinese readers home and abroad, the contemporary Chinesetranslator Wang Hanchuan adds numerous explanatory notes and diagrams in histranslation of the Bible. Based on the preliminary research of the annotations in WangHanchuan’s translation of the Four Gospels, this thesis investigates the ideas andpractice of thick translation in the literary orientation of the Chinese Bible translationadopting the analytical and comparative methods.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a basic introduction of thebackground, purpose, significance and methodology of the research. Chapter Two isthe literature review of the Chinese and western Bible translation history and it pointsout the literary orientation of the Chinese Bible translation and elaborates theapplication of thick translation in Bible translation. Chapter Three investigates theprinciples and application of thick translation in the literary translation. Chapter Four comparatively analyses the translating strategy of thick translation in WangHanchuan’s translation of the Four Gospels, testifies the feasibility and significanceof thick translation in Bible translation and indicates the theoretical significance ofthick translation for Bible translation. Chapter Five concludes the thesis.This thesis points out that thick translation is the translating strategy which givessufficient consideration of the original text, the target readers’ horizons and thetranslator’s own horizon. With the adoption of translating strategy of thick translation,Wang Hanchuan’s translation behavior of adding the explanatory materials help thetarget readers with a better understanding and appreciation of the Bible, and hisChinese version of the Four Gospels embodies the literary orientation. Thicktranslation is of great significance for the translation and transmission of the Bible anddeserves further exploration.