Gains And Losses Of English Versions For Da Xue:a Multi-Perspective Approach

Da Xue, standing among the "Four Books", has deeply and widely influenced the ideology of Chinese intellectuals ever since its coming into being. The significance of the translation of Da Xue is obvious in preserving traditional Chinese culture and promoting Sino-foreign cultural exchanges.In the light of the theory of equivalent translation, especially Eugene A. Nida’s theory of functional equivalence and Skopos theory and theory of communicative translation, this thesis undertakes a comparative study of the five versions respectively by James Legge, Joshua Marshman, Robert Morrison, David Collie, Lin Yutang, from both linguistic and cultural perspectives, assessing their loss and gain in translation.The thesis consists of five parts. In the part of Introduction, the thesis gives a brief introduction of Da Xue, including its origin, historical development, historical status and an illustration of the dissemination of Da Xue in the West and a literature review of the studies on the translation of Da Xue is also presented. In the part of Chapter One, on the basis of the translation theory of Nida’s functional equivalence, abundant examples from the five translators’ English versions are analyzed to show whether the translations are equivalent to the original at three levels:the lexical level, the syntactical level and the stylistic level. In the part of Chapter Two, in the light of Skopos theory, the thesis compares and analyzes the different translation strategies adopted and the format arrangements of five versions, highlighting that Skopos of the translation determines the process of translation. In the part of Chapter Three, from the perspective of culture, the errors and insufficient translations in the rendering of the culture-specific words are illustrated to assess the relevant gain and loss. The last part is a conclusion of the previous three chapters, calling on further and interdisciplinary studies of the translations of Da Xue.