A Study On Variation In English Versions Of Tao Te Ching From The Perspective Of The Meme Theory

Tao Te Ching is a significant source of Taoism philosophy,and has exerted profound influence on China’s philosophy,science,politics and religion.Tao Te Ching mainly discusses “Tao” and “Te”.“Tao” is about the principles of how everything goes on in the universe and how a person performs the way in his life.“Te” does not mean virtue or moral,but the view of world and the way of living.According to UNESCO,Tao Te Ching is the cultural work besides The Bible that has been published in foreign language for most times.Therefore,researches on the English translation of Tao Te Ching is of great worth for Chinese cultural to go global.The meme theory is applied to explain the rules of cultural evolution based on Darwin’s evolution theory.It holds that ideas or thoughts are passed from generation to generation by being imitated and transmitted.The term “meme” was first proposed by Prof.Richard Dawkins.It refers to a cultural information unit;language,cultural custom,ideas or behaviors all can be considered as memes.Memes are characterized by longevity,fecundity and fidelity.Its transmission process includes variation,choice and heritage.Memes variate in the process of transmission,and those after variation would face the choice of target audience of whether or not accepting them.Variation and choice affect the heritage of memes,which is the effect of transmission.In translation,memes conveyed through the target text are not always the same as the original ones.If they are well accepted in the target culture,then a certain cultural image would be conveyed.From the perspective of the meme theory,this thesis takes Stephen Mitchell’s and D.C.Lau’s translation of Tao Te Ching as examples to study how the phenomena of variation takes place through translation strategies,and its affecting factors and readers’ acceptance.In the thesis,there are three situations of variation: ellipsis of the meme,replacement by another meme,as well as blending of memes to explain the main idea.The three situations correspond to different translation methods:zero-translation,replacement of the original meme with one in the target culture and addition or imitation to combine different memes to help readers understand.Through research it is found that in Stephen Mitchell’s version,variation takes place through domesticating translation strategy.Such translation is to transmit the original idea in a way familiar to the target readers,so it helps readers better understand the target text because the language is more fluent and there are more familiar memes.Stephen Mitchell applies the strategy of domestication by zero-translation,replacement with target memes and blending other memes to help readers understand.That is because as a best-selling author with a Western cultural background,Mitchell is clearly aware what kind of language would be popular with the public.In addition,he has a personal purpose of translation,which is to spread Eastern Zen culture and reflect them in a way that is more acceptable to the public.His version wins great popularity and it can be seen that readers don’t care what the real Chinese culture is like,instead they look for spiritual support from the book.On the contrary,there is only a few variation in D.C.Lau’s version,with the strategy of foreignization most of the times.Foreignization strategy preserves the original features of the meme,and the translator conveys the meme in original language forms,thus variation is less likely to happen.It enables readers to appreciate the exotic features of the original memes.D.C.Lau makes the translation a faithful carrier of memes,instead of replacing it with a similar meme in the target language culture.This is because D.C.Lau has an excellent bilingual cultural background and is proficient in the differences between the two cultural environments.The purpose of his translation is to spread the original Chinese culture,so he strives to translate exotic culture through foreignization.However,as the Western does not accept Chinese cultural memes in a high degree,the dissemination of this translation may not be ideal at first,but as the intercultural communication takes place more frequently,the translation has gradually attracted increasing attention.