A Comparative Study Of The Two Translation Versions Of The Classic Of Tea(??????)—from The Perspective Of Chesterman's Translation Norms

The Classic of Tea,the first monograph on tea,was written by Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty.The book includes ten chapters in three volumes.With only about 7,000 Chinese characters,it imparts a wealth of knowledge on the history of tea in the Tang Dynasty and before.As an important part of Chinese tea culture,the translation of The Classic of Tea is of positive significance to the dissemination of excellent traditional Chinese culture.Till now,there are two complete English versions: one is entitled The Classic of Tea: Origins & Rituals by Francis Ross Carpenter,an American scholar,which made its way into The Encyclopedia Britannica(1982),and the other is co-translated by two Chinese scholars,Jiang Xin and Jiang Yi,which is a sub-volume of Library of Chinese Classics.In order to study the different characteristics and their root,the authoress of this thesis resorts to qualitative and quantitative methods.Chesterman's translation norms are adopted to make a detailed comparative analysis of the two versions from the perspectives of expectancy norms and professional norms.As a research method of descriptive translation study,corpus is more objective compared with traditional methods.The thesis also makes a comparison of the two versions from lexical,syntactic and textual levels with AntConc,a corpus search tool,which further verifies the differences in language styles between the two versions.Through qualitative and quantitative analysis,the authoress finds that although the translators of both versions are striving to conform to the translation norms,the two versions show distinct linguistic features,reflecting that Chinese and foreign translators adopt different translation strategies and thus have different levels of acceptance among target readers.Carpenter's translation is concise in language and fluent in style,while Jiang Xin and Jiang Yi's is more difficult to understand due to its complicated words and sentences in order to retain the original stylistic features to the largest possible extent.The root is that Carpenter's translation is a personal act.In the process of translation,as the translator and the commissioner,Carpenter can communicate with all parties involved in translation and take advantages of his identity—a native English speaker.However,the translation of Jiang Xin and Jiang Yi is entrusted by the government in which many parties are involved and the scope of target readers is too large to communicate with adequately.As a result,Jiang Xin and Jiang Yi's version cannot fully meet the expectations of the target readers,and ultimately its acceptance is lower than that of Carpenter's version.