On Legge’s English Version Of Zhuangzi From The Perspective Of Thick Translation

Zhuangzi,one of ancient Chinese classics,has more than twenty English versions.Among them,Legge’s version is widely recognized as an authoritative translation and presents an obvious phenomenon of “thick translation”.The concept of thick translation emphasizes locating the translated text in a rich cultural and linguistic context with annotations,accompanying glosses,prefaces,etc.to help target readers fully understand and then truly respect the source culture.However,of all the relevant studies both at home and abroad,few studies investigate Legge’s version from the perspective of thick translation.Therefore,this thesis aims to make an analysis of Legge’s version of Zhuangzi with the focus on its Inner Chapters from the perspective of thick translation.The representation of thick translation in this version and the reasons behind it are analyzed by using the method of text analysis.The target readers’ evaluation of thick translation in this version is investigated with questionnaires developed from the two dimensions of importance and satisfaction based on the IPA(Importance-Performance Analysis)model.Then based on the evaluation results,the precautions and focuses of translators in applying thick translation to practice are explored.Both qualitative study and quantitative study yield the following findings:(1)Thick translation in Legge’s version of Zhuangzi is embodied in three levels.The first is text-remote thick translation,including the preface,introduction,brief notices of different chapters,appendices and the index.The second is text-close thick translation presented by footnotes which can be classified into five categories:informative footnotes,explanatory footnotes,referential footnotes,footnotes for textual criticism and commentary footnotes.The third is textual thick translation manifested through additions in the main text which can be categorized into four types: additions for hidden meaning,grammatical additions,additions for textual cohesion and additions for proper nouns.It is also found that the following four factors contribute to the phenomenon of thick translation in Legge’s version:readership,Legge’s translation principle of faithfulness,Legge’s identities mainly as asinologist and the differences between parataxis and hypotaxis of Chinese and English.(2)In general,the target readers offer a relatively high evaluation of thick translation,especially textual thick translation,in the Inner Chapters of Legge’s version of Zhuangzi.In terms of importance,most of the means of footnotes range from 3.5 to 4.6,and the means of additions from 3.56 to 4.56.In terms of satisfaction,most means of footnotes are higher than 3.5 and nearly all the means of additions are above 4.0.However,some footnotes and additions are found to be of limited importance,and some need to be improved in content.Besides,the importance and the satisfaction of some footnotes and additions rated by target readers are still in controversy.Thus,three suggestions are given to help translators apply thick translation to practice better.First,translators should focus more on textual thick translation than text-close thick translation.Second,translators should understand the levels and needs of their target readers and provide appropriate versions in thickness for them.Third,translators should pay much attention to the more important types of footnotes and additions,and should not add words or explain the source text at will in the main text of the translation.The study reported here not only contributes to the development and improvement of thick translation,but also has some implications for translating ancient Chinese classics.