Cross-cultural Translation And Dissemination Of Chinese Wisdom

Lin Yutang, as a great master in translation, has successfully realized hislong-cherished dream of “spreading Chinese wisdom to the world” and set a goodexample for “disseminating Chinese wisdom to the west”. His translations are ofparamount academic value in cross cultural transmission. Therefore, it is essential toexamine and study Lin’s translations against the backdrop of cultural reality. However,for a very long time after the founding of New China, the study on Lin Yutang and histranslations has gained few but inadequate attentions in the academic circle. What’sworse, most researches have focused merely on simple text comparisons, but ignore theunderlying reasons behind his success in translation. The thesis is an attempt to fillingthe gap.Centering on Lin’s C-E translation-You Meng Ying, the thesis conducts a researchon three aspects: Lin’s choice of the original text, his translation strategies and theunderlying reasons behind his choice. The research finds that Lin’s success intranslating and disseminating Chinese wisdom is because he has not only tried to keepthe “domestication” strategy in language level and “foreignization” strategy in culturallevel, but also takes full consideration of the roles ideology, poetics and patronage playin the text selection, translation process and publication phase. His success intranslation offers inspirations on how to better spread Chinese culture through breakingthe shackles of cultural centralism and relativism.