A Contrastive Study Of Legge And Lin Yutang's English Versions Of Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching is the most important philosophical work and Taoist classic in ancient China,which is the treasure of Chinese culture.Although the words are few,the content is mysterious and profound,broad and profound.The Tao Te Ching's philosophy not only to produce a great impact on the psychological structure of Chinese society for thousands of years,but also for the formation and development of excellent cultural tradition of the Chinese nation also has a positive role at the same time also to solve the problem of western society and religion provides a useful reference.The riddle of language,thought and culture provides a great space for interpretation.In addition,the translator's subjectivity plays a different role in different social and historical contexts,making it possible to diversify the translation.This paper will be on the basis of previous studies,from the cultural background of the translator,translation purpose,mainly is the creativity and translator's subjectivity play three point of view to describe the translation of the Tao Te Ching,found out why the translation appear constantly,to make analysis of this phenomenon,list of James Legge and Lin Yutang's translation of differences,and to explore the cause of different.The necessity of translation of Tao Te Ching is obtained.This paper is composed of three parts: the first part summarizes the current research status of the translation of moral classics,and points out the shortcomings in the research field,which leads to the main content of this research.This paper mainly describes the three high peaks and main works of the Tao Te Ching in the English world,and the characteristics of each translation.The translation of the English translation by James Legge is the representative of the first climax,while Lin Yutang's English translation is the representative of the second translation climax.The second part,through the method of sampling from out of the 81 chapters 35 chapters,mainly from the aspect of language and cultural analysis of James Legge and Lin Yutang's translation strategies in language level,this article selects active and passive,hypotaxis and parataxis,the static and dynamic study these three typical aspects.Culture aspect,this article selects the four keywords culture connotation is rich,i.e."Tao" ? "Teh" ? "Zi-ran" ? "Wu-wei" these four words embody a concentrated reflection of moral by the philosophy thought,at the same time,and it contains rich cultural connotation,has a widespread impact on the Chinese philosophy of life.Therefore,this paper has carried out a careful study of these four words,and emphatically analyzed the translation strategies adopted by Li and Lin in translating these four words.The third part introduces two translators,James Legge and Lin Yutang.Then,from the cultural background,the translation purpose and the translator's creativity,the two versions are analyzed and discussed.Pointed out that due to the different period of the understanding of the translator,the translation purpose is different,and translation play a creative force in the process of translation,eventually lead to different translations,but also explains the necessity of different periods show different translations.It also provides reference for other Chinese classics translation activities.