A Comparative Study On The Translation Of Religious Culture-loaded Terms In The Two English Versions Of Xiyouji

Although Nida’s functional equivalence theory is no longer a dominant translation theory in the current academic world, it is still of importance for translation studies and translation practice. On the other hand, as one of the four Chinese classic novels, Xiyouji is popular among readers for its fantastic plots, humorous expression and sufficient contents. Most remarkable of all, the author of the book interwove various elements of the three major Chinese religions of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism naturally in the story, in which various gods and immortals of these three religions were personified, making the religious stories vivid and humorous rather than boring and dull as they had always been.As native Chinese religions, Confucianism and Taoism have an impact on almost every aspect of people’s life; Buddhism, though has its origin in ancient India, after thousands of years’assimilation by Chinese traditional culture, it is now of distinctive features differing from what it used to be in India and it also serves as one of the major religions in China, together with Confucianism and Taoism permeated into Chinese people’s daily life. Though these three religions have contributed a lot to Chinese culture on the one hand, they have also formed great barriers and challenges to the translation of Xiyouji in that these religious cultures are so different from those of the western religions, mainly the Christian culture. This may partially explain the reason why the full-translated English version did not come out until1970s, though various abridged versions were already published in the last century. At that period of time, two full-translated English versions were published with Britain scholar W. J. F. Jenner and Chinese-American scholar Anthony C. Yu. It’s lucky that both translators are bilingual and bicultural scholars, which add to the readability of their works. Based on Nida’s functional equivalence theory, this thesis aims to make a contrastive study of the two full-translated English versions. With a general introduction to the three major Chinese religions, the author selects the religious culture-loaded terms as the object of study to analyze the translation strategies and methods adopted by the two translators in light of functional equivalence. The study finds that, Jenner adopts flexibly various translation methods in his translation, among which the method of liberal translation is comparatively more extensively used, embodying a tendency of domestication in translation strategy. As a result, the religious elements in his translation are reduced to a minimum, and his version is natural, fluent, and understandable, thus successfully achieving functional equivalence. While Yu mainly adopts the method of literal translation or literal translation plus annotation, embodying a strong tendency of foreignization, thus reserving more Chinese religious factors in his translation so that target readers can obtain a better understanding of the semantic-cultural information of the source text. What’s more, owing to its numerous scholarly and detailed annotations, Yu’s The Journey to the West may serve as a useful reference book to the study of Chinese religions.