An Adaptation-based Study On The Chinese Translation Of Foreign Language Citations In Guanzhuibian

Although Guanzhuibian by Qian Zhongshu is a great academic work mainly onChinese classics, disciplines of humanities like literature, history, philosophy,psychology and cultural anthology are also involved and poems and fables in foreignlanguages like English, French, German and Latin are cited. The whole book iswritten in ancient Chinese, and appreciatingly those foreign language citations arealso translated into elegant ancient Chinese. As a result, the foreign language citationsare integrated in the style of the book and it is difficult to identify them from Chinesecitations and comments. This study employs Verschueren’s (1999/2000) Theory ofLinguistic Adaptation as theoretic framework into the exploration of the Chinesetranslation of foreign language citations with the qualitative study of literaturereview, theoretical and contrastive analysis. This research includes:(1) reviewing thestatus of current researches related to this topic, collecting and sorting QianZhongshu’s ideas on culture and translation;(2) the introduction to the notions andconcepts in the theory of linguistic adaptation and the construct of the theoreticframework for this study;(3) the analysis of Chinese translation of foreign languagecitations in Guanzhuibian in the framework of contextual and linguistic adaptation;(4) an understanding of Qian Zhongshu’s translation idea from the perspective ofpragmatic adaptation.(5) the conclusion and limitations of the study.After conducting the studies as mentioned above, the writer has found that theChinese translation of foreign language citations in the book is well adapted to thecontent and style of Guanzhuibian, which suggests that Qian Zhongshu hassuccessfully introduced western humanities ideas and wisdoms to China whilestudying Chinese classics, and his choice of translation style reveals his academicpursuit of “removing barriers” and “sublimity”.