A Comparative Analysis Of Ku Hungming’s And Slingerland’s English Versions Of Lunyu From The Perspective Of Descriptive Translation Studies

Lunyu is not only the quintessence of Confucianism represented by Confucius,but also the representative of Chinese traditional culture.With the implementation of China’s “going global” strategy in the 21 st century,the study of Lunyu arouses great attention of the academic circles once again.At present,the study of the English translation of Lunyu mainly focuses on the comparison from the linguistic level,and researches from a descriptive perspective are relatively rare.In this thesis,a comparative study is conducted on Ku Hungming’s and Slingerland’s English versions of Lunyu based on Toury’s descriptive translation theory,aiming at exploring the translation norms operating in the two versions and their working effects.Possible causes affecting the formation of the two versions are also probed further to reveal the interaction between translation norms and translators and the cultural environment.Translation studies have shifted from the prescriptive paradigm to the descriptive one since the 1970 s.The school of descriptive translation studies treats translation as cultural facts,putting translated works in their socio-cultural contexts to explore the underlying factors influencing the translation activity and to make corresponding explanations and predications.Toury introduces the concept of translation norms and argues that every stage of translation is restricted by translation norms to some extent.He further distinguishes three kinds of translation norms—preliminary norms,initial norms and operational norms.Preliminary norms exist prior to the beginning of translation activities,including translation policy and the directness of translation;initial norms determine the overall inclination in translators’ choices;operational norms control translation from the macro layout and the micro translation strategies,diction and style and other aspects.Toury further states the textual and extra-textual materials are the foundation to establish translation norms.This study employs the bottom-up research paradigm,that is,through the analysis of the specific operational level to infer the translator’s orientation of the two cultural systems—initial norms.Conclusions reveal the two translators’ selection of the original texts meets the needs of both the target culture and the source culture under the government of preliminary norms.Governed by operational norms,at the macro level,the two translators both add subtitles,prefaces,and a large number of footnotes to immerse the two versions in different cultural contexts.Three micro aspects,namely,sentence patterns,culture-specific items and the stylistic features of the two translations are compared.The similarities lie in their complement of non-subject and non-conjunction sentences,which makes the translation fluent and congruent with English expressions;their differences are,for one thing,Ku prefers to translate interrogative forms into narrative forms,and question-answer sentences are translated in flexible patterns too.On the contrary,Slingerland matches strictly with the sentence patterns and word order of the original.For another,Ku adopts the strategies of omission,analogy and interpretation to deal with the selected twenty culture-loaded words and concrete words are preferred,whereas Slingerland tends to employ literal translation plus pinyin and Chinese characters and annotation.Besides,the ambiguity of the words is reserved.In addition,Ku’s translation is simple and neat in style,which is more consistent with the concise style of the original.Slingerland’s version is intelligible and idiomatic but a little verbose.From the above analysis,it is safe to conclude,as to initial norms,Ku inclines to acceptability while Slingerland,taking the target readers into account,reveals the original features to the largest extent,thus inclines to adequacy.Although the two translators tend to different linguistic norms,the translation norms in operation work well.Therefore,the two versions are successful examples of translation accepted by the target culture under the operation of translation norms.Translators in different periods will employ different translation strategies under the influence of historical and cultural context.In today’s times,western readers are eager to know about the real Chinese culture.Therefore,it is of great practical significance and value for translators to better integrate bilingual cultural norms and seek the optimal strategies.Translators need to probe the effective ways of communication in translation of Chinese classics from the aspects of the choice of the originals,the readers’ needs,the socio-cultural contexts,the purpose of translation and the publisher and so forth.Striving for cultural facsimile and properly combining cultural adaptation,Slingerland’s version provides an excellent model for the contemporary translation of Chinese classics.This study is conducive to the understanding of the social property of translation activities and the objective evaluation of the translated texts,which not only furnishes a new perspective for the translation of Chinese classics,but also contributes to the spread of classics and the production of excellent versions.