A Comparative Analysis Of Two English Versions Of Xiao Jing From The Perspective Of Philosophical Hermeneuties

This thesis is a comparative study of two English translations of Xiao Jing (James Legge, Roger Ames&Henry Rosemont) based on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. The thesis reviews the evolvement of the discipline of hermeneutics and then introduces the core concepts of "historicity of understanding","prejudice" and "fusion of horizons". Horizon of the source text and that of the translator have been analyzed; fusion of horizons have been studied from the aspects of culture loaded words and syntax. The author does not aim to judge the translation, but to explore the reasons why different translations of the same text exist and to reconsider the mistranslation phenomenon.This thesis concludes that historicity of understanding is the root cause of different translations of Xiao Jing, while mistranslations are unavoidable due to constraints of historical and cultural situation and the prejudice of translators. Different fusion of horizons result in different versions with distinct features. From the perspective of culture loaded words, Legge’s identity as a missionary influenced his translation and therefore some mistranslations exist in his version; while Roger and Henry’s version is based on comparative philosophy and tries to extricate from the influence of western prejudice. From the perspective of syntax, Legge tries his best to reproduce the syntactic features of the original version; while Roger and Henry adopts a domestication method as they believe the transfer of semantic information in ancient Chinese texts should precede the transfer of syntactic structure. Suggestions on retranslating Chinese classics are provided.