A Comparative Study On Fusion Of Horizons In Two English Versions Of Lun Yu

As one of Chinese Confucian classics, Lun Yu covers a wide range of issues concerning culture, education, history, philosophy, social ideals and even the way one conducts in society. Its translation, particularly the English version, has been playing a significant role in helping westerners better perceive Chinese culture. The overseas studies of the translations of Lun Yu have experienced a long history and they are mainly centralized among sinologists, appearing in the form of book reviews, research papers as well as comments in the book prefaces; while domestic studies of Lun Yu started in the 1990 s, most of them conducted by translation researchers while a few made by historians as well as experts engaged in philosophical research.This thesis carries out a comparative study of the two English versions of Lun Yu from the perspective of fusion of horizons in an attempt to expound that translators with different backgrounds may interpret the same text in similar or different ways, which is largely attributed to their horizons. In this study, the author selects the two translators Gu Hongming and Arthur Waley mainly because both of them are really representative of all the translators of Lun Yu.In this thesis, the author compares the two English versions of Lun Yu in three aspects: the translation of culture-loaded words, the translation of figures of speech and their different language styles and finally finds out that only when the horizon of the translator and that of the original text is well fused can the translation be regarded as the effective and significant understanding and interpretation. That is to say, the translator is supposed to rid as much personal “prejudice” as possible and try to approach and explore the horizon of the original text so that his horizon and that of the original text will be well fused, which is responsible for the proper and efficient translation.