On The Translation Of Chinese Classics From The Perspective Of Thick Translation

As one of the four great novels of Ming dynasty or the four great classical novels of China,The Journey to the West is well listed,which has irreplaceable value and significance in traditional Chinese novels.As one of the Chinese classics,The Journey to the West has been widely welcomed and praised for hundreds of years.The language and content of the novel are closely related to Chinese traditional culture.Its writing characteristics are mainly in vernacular,with poems between them,which are often exaggerated,metaphorical,parallel and catchy.Its content comes from Buddhist Scripture stories,which contain strong Chinese religions,myths and values.The above cultural and linguistic elements add difficulties and obstacles to the translator's work of translating The Journey to the West.To explore the practical effective translation methods have become an important subject of translators and translation studies.As an extension of cultural anthropology in the field of translation studies,the theory of “thick translation” put forward by American scholar Appiah is of great significance to the translation of The Journey to the West.Previous studies have shown that although Appiah put forward the concept of “thick translation”,its practice is a controversial topic.Appiah himself only gives the general direction,emphasizing that “thick translation” depends on context,and lets translators design their own specific implementation methods.In recent years,many scholars have done related classification research,forming a more extensive research basis.Based on the theory of thick translation and the corpus of the cultural classic—The Journey to the West,the thesis discusses the categories and methods of thick translation strategies employed by the translator in the process of translation,in order to summarize the thick translation strategies and methods applicable to the translationof Chinese classics.It is found that Yu's translation of The Journey to the West shows an obvious tendency of thick translation,which can be divided into thick translation outside the text and thick translation within the text.The former is embodied in the preface,introduction,a large number of illustrations and endnotes added to the translation,while the latter is manifested in the addition of brackets,dashes,complements,appositions and attributives to supplement the translation and reveal the unique Chinese cultural connotation.