| Lao Tzu is the founder of the Taoist school of Chinese philosophy.His Tao Te Ching is honored as "the King of Jing(????)" and is one of the earliest philosophical books in China.Tao Te Ching is such an age-old book,from the pre-Qin period to modern China,that countless commentaries of Tao Te Ching have been published.And as for the original text,there are three versions of Tao Te Ching,namely the Vulgate,Mawangdui(a mausoleum of the Han Dynasty)Silk Manuscripts,and Guodian Bamboo Slips from the Chu State in the Warring States Period.Therefore,to interpret Tao Te Ching becomes a great challenge.Even so,Tao Te Ching became the ancient Chinese classic with the most translation versions,only second to the Bible.However,due to the variety of Tao Te Ching commentaries and its original text,the quality of different versions of Tao Te Ching translation varies a lot,especially in understanding the original text and expressing text implications.In fact,interpreting ancient Chinese classics like Tao Te Ching in modern Chinese is intra-lingual translation and translating these classics into foreign languages is inter-lingual translation.These two periods of translation are unavoidable in most cases,it is rarely seen that someone can directly translate ancient Chinese into foreign languages.While evaluating translation,the most basic standards are "faithfulness","expressiveness" and "elegance",and for works focusing more on ideas than on the form,e.g.,Tao Te Ching,"faithfulness" should be the primary standard.What determines the "faithfulness," of a translation is the translator's understanding of the original text,and to evaluate the quality of such understanding we should use Xungu.Xungu is almost the only method to interpret or understand ancient Chinese classics,whether it is explaining words,sentences or chapters,or analyzing writing skills and styles,which are all included in Xungu.Therefore,while comparing and analyzing the faithfulness of three Tao Te Ching translations respectively made by Arthur Waley,Lin Yutang and Xu Yuanchong,this thesis adopts the methods and perspective of Xungu.By referring to commentaries like the versions of Wang Bi and Chen Guying,specialized dictionaries for ancient Chinese characters,and to the notes made by translators themselves,this thesis evaluates the faithfulness and veracity of the three versions of translation.This thesis adopts case studies as its research form to compare and analyze controversial parts in the three versions.This research is done in two dimensions including word and text.The word dimension is divided into two parts,namely case studies of phonetic-interpretation and of semantic-interpretation;and the text dimension is divided into four parts,namely case studies of sentence-pausing,grammar,cultural and historical terms and chapter theme.Since the form of this research is case studies,it cannot include all the controversial parts into detailed analyses,but in the Appendix,all the controversial parts in terms of faithfulness from Chapters 1 to 81 are listed in a table for reference.After a systemic comparative research,this thesis concludes that the translation version by Lin Yutang is the best one from the respect of faithfulness,and he has also made many notes and commentaries to help readers continue further learning apart from accurately transmitting the ideas of Tao Te Ching;the translation version by Arthur Waley shows his strong will to introduce Chinese culture and philosophy to the West,and he has also made a lot of notes after translation,but with some mistakes in understanding,and sometimes even in the understanding of a whole chapter,e.g.,Chapters 31 and 74;the translation of Xu Yuanchong is the neatest in form and is with poetic rhymes,maybe it is also because of such elegance of translation,Xu Yuanchong sometimes uses over-translation or omission,and when it comes to cultural and historical understanding,Xu Yuanchong does not do as well as Lin Yutang and Waley. |
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