A Comparative Study Of The English Versions Of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War From The Perspective Of Bourdieu's Sociological Theory

As a classical military work,The Art of War is famed throughout the world.According to relevant statistics,there have existed as many as dozens of English translations of The Art of War from 1905 to the present time.The translations of Giles,Griffith and Lin Wusun are chosen because there are three different perspectives,namely a literary perspective,a military perspective and a cultural perspective,which can be analyzed on the basis of Bourdieu's sociological theory.Pierre Bourdieu is a master of sociology in France.By the late 1990s,the western academics in translation field have applied Bourdieu's sociology to carry on translation studies,which largely broadens the theoretical horizon of translation studies and is helpful for comparative analysis of translations from the aspect of translators and their own social and historical backgrounds,etc.The thesis comparatively analyzes the three translations from the view of translation motivation and perspective,translation strategies(domestication and foreignization),translation methods(literal translation,free translation,transliteration,omission and false translation)and translation text(rhetorical devices,military terms and culture-loaded words).In the end,the author gives high praise to Bourdieu's sociological theory for its guiding role in translation studies—Lionel Giles is in the literature and translation field.His good education,books published related to China and a strong bilingual ability become his cultural capital,and his publication fee also provides himself with economic capital.His scholar identity,individual academic achievements and publishers' support become his social capital.All the capitals build his habitus:his translation stresses on literary knowledge and his attitude to Chinese culture is to serve English by introducing more Chinese literary knowledge.He tends to adopt domestication strategy with methods of free translation in most cases.Compared with Griffith and Lin Wusun,he is good at translating rhetorical devices,moderate at culture-loaded words and poor at military terms since his outstanding bilingual capacity and limited Chinese culture and lack of military knowledge;as for Griffith,he is in the military and translation field.His good education and his familiarity of both English and Chinese military knowledge become his cultural capital.He is a general of United States,which offers himself economic and social capitals.Meanwhile,famous military theorist Liddell Hart prefaces his translation,which also becomes his social capital.All the capitals build his habitus:his translation stresses on military knowledge and his attitude to Chinese culture is to serve America by introducing more Chinese military knowledge.In order to make the book more easier for target readers,he adopts domestication strategy with free translation in most cases and literal translation in a few cases.To our regret,there are some limitations in his literary knowledge and knowledge of Chinese culture,which makes it difficult for him to understand some Chinese culture.Compared with Giles and Lin Wusun,he is poor at translating rhetorical devices,moderate at culture-loaded words and good at military terms;in terms of Lin Wusun,he is in the culture and translation field.Good education,familiarity of both English and Chinese culture and military knowledge,and many books published become his cultural capital.His identity as a president of China Publishing Group and the support from Library of Chinese Classics provides economic and social capital.In addition,as a bilingual or multilingual user,he has a kind of intercultural habitus built in the progress of contacting with his native culture and exotic cultures.He stresses on cultural knowledge and his attitude to Chinese culture is to introduce Chinese culture all over the world.He prefers to foreignization and transliteration.He does well in conveying the meaning and form,military and cultural knowledge of The Art of War.Meanwhile,the author recognizes shortcomings of this study and gives corresponding suggestions for better studies in the future—to promote the development of Bourdieu's sociological theory,broaden the scope of English versions and examples and to avoid subjectivity of selecting versions and examples by using corpus or some statistical tools.