| A Short History of Chinese Philosophy by Fung Yu-lan (1895-1990) wascompiled and edited from his lecture notes in1946when he taught history of Chinesephilosophy at Pennsylvania University. It was published by Macmillan Education in1948. Now, there are two Chinese versions on markets. One is written by TuYouguang. It is the first Chinese version of Fung’s English original and also the firstand only one version under the proofreading and examination of Fung himself. Theother one is by Zhao Fusan. Through trans-lingual studies of key words in source text,the thesis finds that mistranslation is existing in Tu’ version, which reflects Tu’sinadequate understanding or misunderstanding of cultures in the source and targetlanguage countries, of meanings the source text intends to convey and of the freshmeanings terms assimilated from dialogues between China and the West.Mistranslating in the thesis mainly refers to cultural mistranslation, i.e. culturalmistranslation. Being the carrier of culture, the unique meaning of words isdetermined by the uniqueness of culture. Based on the profound history of Chineseindigenous culture and analysis of a large amount of materials and documents, thisthesis gives out a detailed and systematic discussion about the mistranslation of wordsin Tu’s Chinese version by taking the specific words as a case study. After analysis, itfinds that due to the lingual and cultural differences, the translator adopts aword-for-word or literal translation strategy towards those words without realizing therich referential and associative connotation behind them. This consequently leads tothe loss or twist of cultural images in the original culture. Above all, the profoundreasons of these mistranslations lie in the manipulation of patronage, ideology and theexpectation of the intended audience. What’s more, these manipulations are inevitablyinvolves conflicts and integration of the original and the target language cultures. As aresult, the thesis reaches the conclusion that the transparent translatability betweenwords from different cultures is impossible. It would undoubtedly involve the collision, negotiation and struggle of two cultures. Mistranslation is just onemanifestation of that process.This thesis intends to make the following contributions. First, we hope thetrans-lingual studies of key works could further enrich the cultural translation studiesof mistranslation. Second, we hope that this thesis could shed some new lights ontrans-lingual studies of key words originated from China and prove that some Chineseword with profound philosophical connotation could also exert an influence on thecultural construction of the west. |
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