A Comparative Study Of Three English Versions Of Tao Teh Ching From The Perspective Of Eco-Translatology

Tao Teh Ching, a book with eighty-one chapters consisting of five thousand words, is the classical work of Lao Tzu, the fruit of ancient Chinese civilization and a cultural treasure shared by all human beings. Under the background of global culture, Tao Teh Ching has been translated into more than twenty languages such as English, French, German, Russian and so on, thus creating more than one thousand translated versions, among which, the English ones translated by different translators at home and abroad reach more than one hundred. At present, the studies of the English translation of Tao Teh Ching mainly focus on two aspects:One is the study of a certain translator's version from various perspectives; the other is the comparative study of different versions translated by translators at home and abroad. However, there are only a few comparative studies on domestic translators'versions from the perspective of Eco-Translatology which is a newly-rising theory. Therefore, the thesis attempts to make a comparative study of the three English versions of Tao Teh Ching translated respectively by D. C. Lau, Gu Zhengkun and Xu Yuanchong based on Professor Hu Gengshen's Eco-Translatology theory.Professor Hu Gengshen of Tsinghua University is the founder and advocate of the theory of Eco-Translatology, the emergence of which provides a brand new perspective for translation studies and has a great significance for the establishment of translatology. It is an emerging paradigm of systematic studies on textual ecologies, translational eco-environments, and "translation community" ecologies, as well as their interactions and interrelationships. Regarding the scene of translation as a holistic ecosystem, it describes and interprets translation activities in terms of ecological principles of Eco-holism, oriental eco-wisdom, and Translation as Adaptation and Selection. Founded under the background of global ecology, it makes a comprehensive observation and description of translational ecological integrity and translational theoretical ontology (including translation nature, process, standard, principle, method and translation phenomenon).The thesis selects three Chinese translators'(they are D. C. Lau, Gu Zhengkun and Xu Yuanchong) translated versions of Tao Teh Ching as the objects of research, and attempts to make an analysis of these three translators' translational eco-environments when they translated Tao Teh Ching as well as apply the related theory of Translation as Adaptation and Selection to make a comparative study of these three translators' translated versions from the dimension of language, culture and communication. From the macro level, it investigates and discusses the factors of translational eco-environments which influence these three translators' completion of translation and selection of translation strategies, then analyses how translators in different translational eco-environments make constant adaptation and selection in the process of translation from the micro level. Via the study, it comes to the conclusion that even though in different translational eco-environments, translators attempt to make adaptive selection and selective adaptation from the dimension of language, culture and communication so as to realize ideal translation of higher degree of integral adaptation.