A Comparative Study Of Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In English And German Versions Of The Book Of Changes From The Perspective Of Domestication And Foreignization

Classics constitute an essential part of the Chinese culture, and translation of classics helps to spread the culture around the globe. Among the Chinese classics, The I Ching, also known as Book of Changes, is a masterpiece that has propelled scholars to translate into different languages. Since the end of the19th century when James Legge first translated the book into full English version, the research on the book and its translations never stops.The writer selects two most widely accepted versions, the English version of James Legge and the German version of Richard Wilhelm, and one highly praised English version, translated by Wang Rongpei and Ren Xiuhua, who are leading authors in I-Ching translation in China, to conduct a comparative research. The writer chooses the perspective of foreignization and domestication to analyze the translation of five types of culture-loaded words in three versions, summarize the translation strategies of the translators from different cultural backgrounds, and identify the reasons behind their choices of strategies. There has not been any comparative study that focuses on the English and German versions of I-Ching in China, thus, the thesis hopes to contribute to the multilingual translation study.