A Study Of Indirect Translation From The Perspective Of Paratext Theory

Indirect translation is used to indicate the translation process that does not translate directly from the original text but through the mediating text,and it can be simply understood as a translation of translation.Indirect translation has a long-standing history.Owing to globalization and the increasingly high number of working languages,it is widespread,with a promising future,in various areas of today's society,including audiovisual,computer-assisted translation,literary translation and localization.Despite all that,comments on indirect translation vary from one to another,and it has traditionally attracted only marginal attention from translation scholars.Only in recent years has it become a more popular concept in translation studies,and attracts attention from different fields.In general,although indirect translation is not a popular concept as before,its value in the translation development process increases day by day,which cannot be ignored or neglected.Against this background,this thesis selects Baynes' translation of I Ching as the research object,and takes Paratext Theory as the research perspective,aiming at finding the motivation,forms,influence and acceptance of indirect translation in this book.Genette's Paratext Theory confirms that paratextual information is also of great importance when studying a typical text.The conception of “paratext”,first raised by the French scholar Genette,refers to verbal or other materials(such as cover,prefaces,title etc.)to present the work.It involves four aspects: spatial situation,temporal situation,substantial status and pragmatic status.This thesis classifies the paratextual information of Baynes' translation of I Ching mainly according to spatial situation.Through the study on the paratextual information of Baynes' translation of I Ching including prefaces,sources about historical background and translators,notes,covers,contents,book reviews,research status,along with translation comparisons with Legge's translation of I Ching,findings were obtained in the following aspects: Firstly,the motivations of indirect translation can be found from prefaces and sources about historical background and translators;secondly,traces are among notes,covers and contents;lastly,through the book reviews and translation comparisons,effects,research value and acceptance of the book can be found.To be specific,we can conclude:(1)There are mainly two motivations of indirect translation in this book.On the one hand,after World War I,Richard Wilhelm began to reflect on Western culture and was eager to find solutions from the wisdom of Chinese classics.Thus,he started to study Chinese culture.His enthusiasm and hard work produced the German version of I Ching,which is of great practicability and research value.On the other hand,circumstances in the western countries play important roles as the social context at that time.With English widely used all over the world,in order to spread Wilhelm's translation and disseminate Chinese culture,the German version of I Ching was translated into English;(2)We can see clearly the traces and forms of indirect translation in Baynes' German translation of I Ching from the notes,covers and contents of this work.“the Richard Wilhelm translation” on the cover and “rendered into English by Baynes” on the inside cover all indicate that Baynes translated Wilhelm's German translation into this English version;Apart from obvious indication on the book cover,it is also found that the translator's preface is written by Wilhelm,which further proves that Wilhelm's translation is the mediating text;“By Wilhelm”,“render the German word”,such words are used enormously in notes,which all expose the existence of indirect translation.(3)In addition,many reviews listed in this paper reveal readers' positive attitudes towards this book;the research status of this book indicates its high research value and important position: articles about Baynes' translation of I Ching take a large proportion of all articles about English translation of I Ching and all stress the research value of Baynes' translation;Comparing with Legge's translation,we find Baynes' translation has its own comparative advantages,which further proves,to a certain extent,that indirect translation is favorably accepted and well received in this book.It is hoped that analysis of the phenomenon of indirect translation of I Ching will enhance our understanding of this special translation practice and promote Chinese culture going global by means of translating Chinese classics.