The Study On The Influence Of The Translator’s Psychology On The Translation Of The Analects

The Analects, one of the most important Chinese classics, records the ideas and thoughts of Confucius, the great thinker and educator in ancient China. The book, with its characteristic literary style, elucidates a holistic system of Chinese conceptions on personal cultivation and governmental management. The philosophy, politics, education, literature, arts and one’s ways of coexisting with his surrounding environment related with these conceptions form the essence of Chinese culture. Throughout the history, the influence of the book is not confined to surrounding nations and areas of China, but also spreads to Europe and North America.The wide influence of The Analects in the west is realized by means of inter-lingual translation, especially English translation. Up to now, English versions of The Analects reach nearly forty, more than versions of any other foreign language. The study of those versions is essential to the transmission and revitalization of our own culture when it encounters another. Different versions are bound to differ from each other in many ways such as the choices of words and the transmission of the style of the original. These differences, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, are caused by the translator’s psychology, which plays great roles during the translation process. In other words, the psychology of different translators determines the final presentations of different versions. Therefore, the study of the translator’s psychology would deepen our understanding of the nature of translation and offer enlightenments in our translation activities.In recent years, the study of translators’ psychology has gained more and more attention from scholars with the development of cognitive science, especially cognitive psychology. Different from the traditional idea that translation is a static process, the science supports the opinion that translation is a dynamic process in which the translator’s psychological elements exert great influences. It is those elements that determine the translator’s understanding and their translation strategies. This perspective has opened up a new way to translation studies. This paper uses Bell’s translation model as its theoretical basis, exploring the translators’ psychological elements during translation activities. And the two versions it takes as study objects are James Legge and Ku Hungming’s versions. The two versions are representative in that Legge’s version has been long held as the most authoritative while Ku’s version is the first version by Chinese, and is proved popular among western readers. The paper divides translation process into understanding stage and decision-making stage, and analyses the translator’s psychological elements at these two stages, namely their fore-structures and their translation motivation. The former is the translators’ knowledge reserved in their minds, and the latter has much to do with the translators’translation strategies and methods.The findings shows that Ku has an edge about understanding the source text thanks for his excellent learning environment for Chinese and his profound knowledge of Chinese culture. In addition, the different styles of the two versions are caused by the two translator’s respective translation motives. Ku’s version appears natural and smooth while Legge’s is relatively rigid. Moreover, driven by their translation motives, Ku tends to be casual in some of his translation approaches, which hinders the effective information transmission of the source text while legge’s version offers detailed materials for westerners who desire to learn about China. It is pointed out, at the end of the paper, that translators with source language as their mother tongues are in a better position in understanding the original text aided by their native cultures. In the new era, Chinese translators should try harder to make themselves better equipped for the spreading work of Chinese classics via translation.