On The Plural Complementarism Of English Translations Of San Zi Jing

Based on the plural complementarism,the thesis mainly explores the retranslations of San Zi Jing and the scientific quality assessment of translations.The plural complementarism advocates considering translations in a tri-dimensional way,which changes previous binary thinking and becomes the innovative perspective of translation theory.San Zi Jing,as one of the representative Chinese elementary enlightenment classics,is characterized by three characters for a line,four lines for a stanza,terseness and forcefulness and strong readability,which has attracted a great number of Chinese and Westerners' attention and been translated by sino-foreign scholars.The thesis produces a new type of translations in a combination of domestication and foreignization and assesses the retranslations by combining qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis under the guidance of the plural complementarism,which would enrich the diversity and the adequacy of the assessment of English translations of San Zi Jing.The sinologist Herbert Allen Giles' San Tzu Ching in 1900 is of great influence so far with the detailed content and intact structures.In order to be understood by exotic readers,the translations of Giles' incline to adopt domestication.After over 100 years,Zhao Yanchun's unique translation the Three Word Primer that is featured with three words for a line and “aabb” for the end rhyme has been drawing scholars' attention and contentions.Zhao's translations whose styles are “stepping-out” tend to be foreignization.As for the assessment,scholars mainly make the qualitative analysis to evaluate the different translations,especially to assess aspects of translations from the perspective of some theory,which is subjective and unconvincing.Through combining the qualitative and quantitative analysis to study the translation quality evaluation,the thesis will show more powerful evidence and is relevantly objective and convincing.The thesis applies case study,descriptive study and prescriptive study to discuss the factors of inner text and outer text in Giles' and Zhao's translations.On the basis of critical appreciation,the thesis tries to retranslate San Zi Jing.In the process of quality assessment of the retranslations,the thesis has used qualitative analysis,fuzzy mathematics,statistics and semi-quantitative analysis to prove the plural complementarism of the English translation of San Zi Jing.The thesis firstly retrospects the achievements on the theoretical and practical studies of English translations of San Zi Jing,sorts out translation patterns of English translations of San Zi Jing from inner text factors and outer text factors,and analyzes the background,significance and key concepts of the plural complementarism.Then,it takes Giles' and Zhao Yanchun's translations from the aspect of the plural complementarism as research objects and explores the factors of outer text and inner text,i.e.,analyzing the background of the texts and the translators and exploring the paratexts(arrangements and functions)and the translations(the effects of sound,form and meaning).Eventually,based on the analysis and traits of the two case studies,the thesis tries to retranslate San Zi Jing with the characteristic of trimeter and “abab” end rhyme.Under the guidance of the plural complementarism,it probes into the quality of the retranslations from absolute standard,supreme standard and specific standard.Moreover,it also introduces the degree of membership to test retranslation quality by virtue of the fuzzy mathematics.The thesis finds that the retranslations not only are of spread and communication,but also enrich the varieties of English translations of San Zi Jing through the combination of domestication and foreignization translation strategies in another style;on the other,succeeding to the preference of previous qualitative analysis on the quality assessment,it also simply makes a semi-quantitative analysis on retranslations to reflect their flaws,showing the objectiveness of the evaluation.In terms of the innovations,this thesis firstly puts forward the plural complementarism of the English translation of San Zi Jing.Then,it retranslates San Zi JIng with trimeter and “abab” for the end rhyme,considering both the adequacy and acceptability.What's more,by applying the degree of membership,the thesis has achieved relatively an objective analysis.