A Study On Translation Strategies Of The Culture-Specific Items In The Analects From The Perspective Of Dynamic Adaptation Theory

One major source of the long-standing Chinese culture is from the Confucianism,and the core of the Confucianism can be found in The Analects.Thus the translation of The Analects is significant especially for communicating and carrying forward the Chinese National Spirit.Through reviewing the existing translation versions,this study finds that traditional versions take "western center" concept as a guide,and mostly adopt substitution strategies.However,along with the social development and cultural integration,new translations have sprung up and shown the tendency of "equal dialogue",i.e.retaining the original philosophical system,and the Chinese Characters,and adopting the retention strategies,which means a lot to the Chinese cultural influence.Therefore,this study selects Canadian sinologist Edward Slingerland's translation as the study object,which was translated on the basis of the sufficient study of predecessors' achievements(the translations of Roger Ames,&Henry Rosemont;D.C.Lau;Bruce Brooks,&Taeko Brooks;and Chichung Huang,the traditional Chinese commentaries of Huang Kan;Cheng Yi;Zhu Xi;and Gu Yanwu),and was published in 2003.The Culture-specific Items,words with the cultural features,bears the responsibility of bridging cultural difference.Because the cultural difference is not always the same,it can be dynamically changed over time,and with that there would be a translation turn.Dynamic adaptation theory emphasizes language transferring and meaning change occurred inner and exterior of language,and this thesis studies the Culture-specific Items in The Analects from the perspective of application of translating strategies through the Dynamic Adaptation Theory.In essence,the translations of the same original text should be adapted to different temporal dimension,context,and linear language structure.According to the translation theories of Peter Newmark,Vlahov and Florin,this study finds five categories of Culture-specific Items in The Analects,which are ecology;material culture;social and political culture;customs and concepts;and ethnic.This study finds that Slingerland used six translation strategies to translate Culture-specific Items,which are repetition;transliteration;linguistic(non-culture)translation;extratextual gloss;intratextual gloss;absolute universalization(the first five are retention methods and the last one is substitution method).These strategies share one trait: highly respecting the original text.More significantly,Slingerland used the combinations of the two or three strategies to translate Culture-specific Items.Dynamic Adaptation Theory is to achieve dynamics from the perspective of temporal dimension,context,and linear language structure.As to temporal dimension,more specifically,the present condition of Chinese Culture Dissemination,Slingerland used the strategies retaining the original image like repetition and transliteration;for the continuous changing translation context,Slingerland translated into their accurate meaning in the original context through using the strategies of linguistic(non-culture)translation,extratextual gloss,intratextual gloss and absolute universalization;because of the exceptional ancient Chinese linear structure,Slingerland arranged the translation naturally using linguistic(non-culture)translation and absolute universalization,so that the target readers could understand the Culture-specific Items without experiencing syntactic difficulties.