An Analysis Of The Translation Of Religious Expressions In Tending The Roots Of Wisdom From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

Compiled by Hong Yingming in Ming Dynasty,Tending the Roots of Wisdom is a set of sayings which exerts profound influence on later generations because of the thoughts of Confucianism,Buddhism and Taoism.Since the 1980 s,a heated analysis of Tending the Roots of Wisdom has spread all over the country and millions of related comments and researches have sprung up like mushrooms after the rain,however,few people systematically study the English translation of religious expressions in it.The thesis makes a case study of Paul White's Tending the Roots of Wisdom to analyze the English translation of religious expressions from rewriting theory.After the Cultural Turn in western translation studies in the 1970 s,theorists of translation studies went beyond the pure linguistic-textual level and began to take cultural factors into consideration.Inspired by poly-system theory,André Lefevere started to take the larger picture into account when conducting scholarly research of translation.According to him,translation is a rewriting of an original text,which is manipulated by both ideology and poetics.The rewriting theory is harnessed as the theoretical framework of this study.With the help of qualitative methods such as data retrieval,text analysis and inductive method,this investigation aims to figure out what underpins Paul White's rewriting of Tending the Roots of Wisdom and summarize several translating principles.Two research questions are put forward in this thesis: first,in which ways can rewriting theory help analyze the translation of religious expressions;second,guided by the rewriting theory,what translating principles can be summarized after an exhaustive analysis of the rendering of religious expressions.From the research,what has been found out is the following:(1)influenced by both the religious factors in the society and his personal religious value,Paul White rewrites the religious expressions by substitution and deletion with the result that the Christian concept has been strengthened and Buddhist and Taoist concept has been weakened.As for poetics,Paul White adheres to the poetics in target-language culture.He rewrites the phrases,sentence structures and rhetorical devices in order to conform to the language transform in the target-language culture.(2)When translating Tending the Roots of Wisdom,Paul White upholds such translation principles as emphasizing target readers' reception and increasing readability respectively.It is hoped to extend the research perspective of Tending the Roots of Wisdom and provide reference to the translation of cultural factors through this research.