The English Translations And Dissemination Of The Analects From The Perspective Of The Other

As a central concept of postmodern translation studies, the Other rejects totality and universalism, focusing instead on the difference, alterity, diversity and complexity. In this regard, it offers a unique perspective which brings to the realm of translation studies a sense of both tension and vitality. Beyond the interlingual transfer, translation is now seen as a cognitive experience of the otherness and a process of embracing the difference. The translation practice dominated by the Western culture displays its preference for a fluent and intelligible TT that erases the traces of the foreign, as a result of the imbalance of power relations between the East and West. The Analects represents the orient Other. The English translation and dissemination of The Analects is not only a major task for Chinese literature to "go international" and to promote the cross-cultural exchanges, but also a tough question facing the translator in an attempt to defend for the foreign and to establish its cultural identity in the target cultural settings.Ku Hungming is an outstanding translator in the middle of the nineteenth century, whereas Lin Wusun an important translator in the21th century. Taking the Other as the theoretical frame of the study, this thesis devotes itself to examining the translators’strategies for the treatment of the otherness of The Analects, and exploring the possible effects of their strategies on the otherness of the ST based on Ku and Lin’s cultural engagements, that is, their voicing the values of Chinese Confucius culture. The aim of the thesis is to explore the possible approaches to highlighting the foreign identity of the ST and to establishing the cultural identity of Chinese other classics, by the lessons to be learned from Ku and Lin’s translation of The Analects. Specifically, this thesis centers on the examination of the translators’strategies for dealing with the linguistic and cultural otherness of the ST, with the use of qualitative and quantitative methods. First of all, the examination of the translators’treatment of the linguistic otherness will focus on their treatment of the linguistic patterning of the ST, their lexical choices, as well as the effects of the rhetoric figures in The Analects. The frequency statistics of the translators’treatment of its linguistic patternings is based on the sentences from a random selection of The Analects, that is, Chapter Ⅰ, Chapter Ⅲ and Chapter Ⅻ. Regarding the examination of the translators’treatment of the cultural otherness, the thesis attempts to examine the translators’strategies for dealing with such central concepts as "ren","li" and "tian", and the Chinese proper nouns, including the names of persons and places in The Analects, with the use of both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Therefore, the perspective of the Other helps the translator rethink the effective translation and dissemination of The Analects and other Chinese classics and provides a theoretical foundation and practical guidance for Chinese literature to "go international".