A Study On The Translation Of Tao Te Ching From The Perspective Of The Reconstructing Cultural Context

As is known to all, Tao Te Ching, more than any other works in the world, tremendousquestions were raised with regard to its authorship, political system, chapter division andcommentaries etc.Traditional Chinese culture has a history of more than five thousand years,and it is well preserved and best illustrated in literary classics. But these intricate argumentsnever stop this book from being an unparalleled miraculous philosophical masterpiece inChina. It possesses only about5,000Chinese characters, whereas its subjects range fromphilosophy, politics, culture, history and ethics. However, we already comprehend the socialculture in China, experience the extensive and profound meaning of China, when we meet thetranslation problems, wording and context will be the main difference between ancient andmodern Chinese prose. Accordingly, with a great curiosity, the author of this thesis has taken ahuge interest in probing English translations of Tao Te Ching from the culture context andreconstruction of cultural context.As a distinguished Chinese classic, Tao Te Ching is so thought-provoking with manyexpressions of vague meaning that is hard for many people to understand. Differenttranslators will take opposite ways to translate the source text because of their personalbackgrounds and the influences of growing-up environment. When they retranslate thesesource texts under the new scope with their own understandings, the brand-new crystallizedideas appeared in public, for this reason, the reconstruction of cultural context has beenestablished. And in this paper, Waley’s version will be used in this study.In this thesis, the research background, purposes and meaning will be explained at thevery beginning. In research background, the author elaborately depicts the historicaldevelopment path of classics translation and summarizes the studies from abroad and at home.Meanwhile, the author takes the perspective of cultural context and translator’s visibility toanalyze deeply the components and results of cultural context reconstruction. Furthermore,the creativity of translator has been mentioned in this thesis, and the reconsideration ofreader’s acceptance and its major proposals for translator’s creativity in western world arealso discussed in this thesis.