On The Ethical Values In Lu Xun’s Translation Thought

It’s well known that Lu Xun is a great man of letters. Shadowed by this gloriousreputation, his another identity—a translator is realized by only a few people. So far, theresearches on his translation and translation thought are not so fruitful. Looking back on theprevious studies indicates that the majority of scholars focus their attention on only one ortwo aspects of it and this is less helpful in judging the values of Lu Xun’s translation thought.At the end of twentieth century, with the rise of translation ethics, a few scholars tended touse Venuti’s ethics of difference to illustrate Lu Xun’s translation thought. These combinationstudies are still only focused on the “hard translation” and quite limited.Therefore, this thesis takes translation ethics as theoretical references to study Lu Xun’stranslation thought, that is, his translation purpose, translation strategies, and translationstandard to unveil the inherent ethical values.The main body of the thesis falls into three parts. Chapter one analyzes the ethical valuesof “responsibility” in Lu Xun’s translation purpose of cultivating people and founding a state,serving the development of Chinese literature, language and benefiting the development ofnext generation. In chapter two, the ethical value of “difference” is analyzed from thestrategies of “hard translation”, selection of weak nations’ original works, and classificationof target readers with the combination study of Lawrence Venuti’s ethics of difference. Inchapter three, Lu Xun’s translation standard of “preference faithfulness to fluency” isanalyzed with the help of Andrew Chesterman’s ethics of representation. Both from thelinguistic and cultural levels, the ethical value of “representation” is unveiled.Study shows that ethical values of responsibility, difference and representation are wellembodied in Lu Xun’s translation thought. The digging of these ethical values can helpdeepen the study of Lu Xun’s translation thought and provide new angles for the study ofChinese traditional translation theories and then gives great inspiration to the development ofmodern Chinese translation theories.