A Contrastive Study Of The Metaphor Translations Of "Ren" In English Versions Of The Analects By James Legg And Ku Hung-ming From The Perspetive Of Relevacnce Theory

Since the late 19th century,there have been more than forty English versions of The Analects,among which James Legge’s version(1861)and Ku Hung-ming’s version(1898)are highly acclaimed and profoundly influential.Shu Dingfang and Tang Benqing hold that“almost every key concept in a culture is a metaphor,like a tip of the iceberg in the ocean,through which we could explore the whole cultural conceptual system hiding underneath.In Chinese culture,‘ren’(仁),‘dao’(道)and‘Tianzi’(天子)are examples of such concepts.”So in this thesis the author chooses to study the key concept-“ren”.Lakoff and Johnson argued that metaphor is a means of cognition and a way of thinking. Etymologically, the Chinese character “ren” itself is a kind of metaphor rhetorically, and there are a lot of ontological metaphors on “ren” in The Analects. Besides, as one of the key concepts in Confucianism, “ren” in different contexts, expresses various metaphoric meanings. Hence, it is necessary to conduct a study of “ren.”Based on the Relevance Theory, the study aims at comparing the metaphors of “ren” in the English versions by James Legge and Ku Hung-ming. The study also attempts to find the reasons lying behind the differences. The results of the study show that both Legge and Ku adopted the indirect method to translate “ren” though they chose totally different English words to express its metaphoric meanings. It is also discovered that different cultural and social backgrounds of the original writer, translator’s intentions and the intended readers’ cognitive backgrounds, needs and expectations all contribute to the differences of “ren” in the two versions.“Ren”, as a heavy culturally-loaded concept, is a very abstract concept. It brings much difficulty for the scholars when it comes to offer a definition for “ren”. They all found that “the connotation of ‘ren’ in The Analects is extremely complex and makes people frustrated”, on which the author of this thesis cannot agree more!...