A Cognitive Study On "Deviation" Of Martin Palmer's English Translation Of Zhuang Zi From The Perspective Of Construal Theory

Zhuang Zi is a treasure of traditional Chinese culture and one of the Taoist classics with profound philosophical thoughts. Over the past century, it has been translated for many times, among existing English versions, Martin Palmer's version is considered to be one of the most important translations. This thesis aims to study Martin Palmer's English translation of Zhuang Zi from the perspective of Construal Theory and tries to find the deep reasons for his deviation.Construal Theory states that construal is the specific ways for people to form concepts or semantic structures and people have different cognitive ability toward same scene. Choosing of scope, changing of focus, perspective or specificity will lead to different construal. Speaker changes his own construal into language, and the hearer needs to restore his cognition. Translation is a process in which the translator tries to restore the original writer's ways of construal which is limited by the translator's own construal ability. The result shows:Martin Palmer's version in some extent restores the original writer's construal mode and is close to the original meaning, but there are still deviations which can be summarized in three aspects:firstly, deviation of scope, deviating immediate scope and background cause misunderstanding meaning of word and sentence in his translation; secondly, deviation of perspective, deviating vantage point and observation point cause changing subject of sentence and grammatical relation between sentences in his translation; thirdly, deviation of prominence, deviating profile, reversing trajectory and landmark cause altering part of speech of word and focus of sentence in his translation. Martin Palmer's deviation of Zhuang Zi is related to his subjective construal which is limited by his personal experience, ways of thinking and personal preference.This thesis tries to study Martin Palmer's English translation of Zhuang Zi based on Construal Theory aiming to explore the reasons for his deviation when construing, which provides a new perspective for studies on English translation of Zhuang Zi and reference for translation of other classics.