Analysis Of Arthur Waley’s English Version Of Confucian Analects---from The Perspective Of Cultural Presupposition

Cultural presupposition refers to the group consciousness and the social consensus formed in the accumulation of history and culture of a certain nation or society, that is, thinking mode and behavior pattern. It is based on cultural context. In the process of translation, the diversity of cultural presupposition becomes one of the major obstacles. the communication among the the writers, translators and readers who are with different cultural backgrounds is also a kind of exchange and fusion of different cultural presupposition. Waley’s English version of Confucian Analects has enjoyed great popularity among readers due to its demotic language style. However, this version does not reveal the cultural presupposition of the source language.This paper analyzes Waley’s English version of Confucian Analects from the perspective of cultural presupposition. Its aim is to find out the mistranslation of Waley and to discuss the reasons contributing to it. The research has found that there are generally two types of mistranslation in Waley’s English version.One is the mistranslation of the language like words or expressions, the other is cultural information. The author believes that such mistranslations result from the influence of cultural background and cultural presupposition. There is a great difference between the living environment and time of the original writer and the translator. What’s more, the problem of being no equivalent words or expressions also widely exists. Such factors at last lead to the great amount of mistranslations. In this paper, some strategies to avoid mistranslation are also suggested, namely, being faithful to the source language culture; dealing with cultural presupposition correctly and reconstructing the structure of the cultural presupposition, with purpose to provide a reference for the the future translation works.