Translation Stances And Strategies Of Chinese Classics From The Perspective Of Hermeneutic Motion

Xiaojing,an ancient Chinese Confucian classic that expounds the idea of filial piety,is both a widely readable textbook for the enlightenment of Chinese children and an entry for the Western world to understand the idea of filial piety in traditional Chinese culture.Its language is concise,refined and rich in meaning,with shun,yi,li,tian,de and other traditional Chinese culture-loaded terms representing the core connotation of filial piety.Therefore,starting from the 1830 s,Elijah Coleman Bridgman,Ivan Chen,Henry Rosemont,Jr.and Gu Danke translated and published Xiaojing many times based on their own cultural stances and understanding of the text.The translators have tried to create a more reasonable cultural context by interpreting Xiaojing from a variety of perspectives,and the differences and similarities in their translation strategies and communication effects have attracted extensive attention from scholars at home and abroad.This study is based on George Steiner’s theory of Hermeneutic Motion and the number of English translations of Xiaojing in the world’s collections,and selects the works of Ivan Chen,Henry Rosemont,Jr.and Roger T.Ames and Gu Danke are selected for this study.In the step of “trust”,this paper examined the motivation of the translators’ text selection,thus illustrating their intentionality;in the step of “aggression”,it explored the influence of the translators’ personal experience,cultural awareness,and other factors on the translation;in the step of“incorporation”.the linguistic characteristics of the translations were compared and analyzed from the perspectives of lexical selection and rewriting of quotations;in the step of“restitution”,it emphasized the role of the translators in the final formation of the text.Therefore,this study aims to answer the following questions:(1)What are the differences in the cultural stances of the three English translations of Xiaojing?(2)What kind of translation strategies did each of the three translators adopt? Do they have different emphases?(3)How is the final representation of each work? What are the implications for the dissemination of traditional Chinese culture in the Western world?The study found that(1)the translators mainly adopted the translation strategies of paraphrasing and transliteration,but with different focuses.Ivan Chen mainly adopted paraphrasing,emphasizing semantics rather than form,and the translation is clearly layered,trying to preserve the beauty of the original text,but the political orientation presented is not obvious;Henry Rosemont,Jr.and Roger T.Ames combined those two translation strategies,referring to previous translations,choosing words and sentences carefully,and clarifying the meaning of shun,li and other traditional Chinese culture-loaded terms.The philosophical and political implications are strong.Based on previous personal translation experiences,Gu Danke’s translation is more subjective.Although it simplifies the connotation of filial piety to a certain extent by means of paraphrasing,its translation is still accurate and fluent.(2)In addition,the three English translations differ in their cultural stances.Ivan Chen found the common heritage of filial thought in the connection between Chinese and Western cultures;Henry Rosemont,Jr.and Roger T.Ames tried to reshape the impression and status of traditional Chinese filial thought in the West from a philosophical perspective;Gu Danke,on the other hand,intended to promote and disseminate traditional Chinese culture and to express the connotation of the original text smoothly and reasonably.Their translations have their own distinctive focuses,and they interpreted the Confucian filial thought and its related core concepts,so that the Chinese texts could be better disseminated in the world.