A Comparative Study Of Three English Versions Of Lao Can You Ji From Translation Ethics

Lao Can You Ji,written by Liu E,belongs to the four greatest condemning novels in the Late Qing Dynasty.Appreciating its great thematic and artistic achievements,many translators choose Lao Can as their source text in order to promote the spread of Chinese culture.Meanwhile,scholars carry on researches about the English versions from various aspects like the subject of translation,the cultural identity of translators and the acceptance among readers all around the world.Ethics refer to the principles in interpersonal relationships.Translation,as an intercultural activity,has to be influenced by ethics of translators.Therefore,it is of great significance to do researches from the perspective of ethics.Concept of translation ethics was firstly put forward by Antoine Berman,and has been attached increasing importance since the appearance of culture turn in 1960s.Among various ethics thoughts,Chesterman's five models:ethics of representation,ethics of service,ethics of communication,norm-based ethics,and ethics of commitment,are the most representative ones.This thesis makes a comparative study of three English versions of Lao Can You Ji(Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's version,Harold Shadick's version,and the newly published version--Geng Zhi and Xiao Liming's version)on the basis of the five models.The author of the present paper believes that the three versions have embodied different ethic models,and this thesis attempts to explore the models mentioned above from four types of items--names,idioms,religious terms and poems.The author finds that only Yangs' version cannot meet the requirements of representation ethics because of its omitted chapters.And Shadick's translation,although it is the one that is most close to the form of the source text,suffers from misinterpretation for translator's misunderstanding of the original text.Therefore,from the perspective of representation ethics,Geng and Xiao's edition is better.Besides,Yangs',and Geng and Xiao's renderings mainly embody communication ethics.From this point,Geng and Xiao's version is superior to Yangs' in that it better retains the culture connotation of the original and is easier to understand.What Shadick employs most is norm-based ethics.And from such an aspect,Shadick's text performs the best for it takes better account of the expectancy of readers.