On Paratexts In English Versions Of Xunzi

Xunzi,one of the important works of the Confucian school,was included in the sixth batch of the Catalog of National Rare Ancient Books in 2020.Xunzi and his works play an important role in the inheritance and development of Chinese Confucian culture.Xunzi has been translated into English in about 15 versions,among which two complete versions were finished by John Knoblock and Eric Hutton,both of whom adopted the thick translation strategy.According to the data obtained from CNKI,there are only less than twenty pieces of research on the English translation of Xunzi.The existing researches have studied the English translation of Xunzi and its translation strategies from the limited perspectives of linguistics,comparative literature,etc.They follow the standards of static text comparison but lack the description of the dynamic context in which the translation is produced,and most of them discuss the text of the translation.The characteristics and thickness of different translation strategies are rarely compared from the perspective of paratext.Based on this,this thesis makes a comparative study of the thick translation strategies in the two English renditions of Knoblock and Hutton from the perspective of paratext.Through the discussion of paratext,the perspective switches to the social and cultural context of the translator to compare the diachronic changes and characteristics of thick translation strategies in the two renditions,that is,how thick the thickness should be,and discusses the significance of the paratextual factors under the thick translation strategy on the translation of Xunzi and Chinese classics.The results show that although both renditions adopt the strategy of thick translation,under the influence of the unique historical context of the translators,they are of different styles.Knoblock’s translation of Xunzi belongs to the research-driven academic translation,which is characterized by thick peritext and thin epitext,while Hutton’s translation belongs to the teach-driven practical translation,which has thin peritext and thick epitext.And the results also show that the paratexts of the two academic translators have different functions on the whole for the target text and the target readers.By studying the two complete English renditions of the Xunzi text from the perspective of paratexts,this thesis intends to provide some inspiration for the overall perspective of the future English translation of Xunzi in a diachronic method,and it makes a certain contribution to the discussion of how thick the translation of the thickness should be in the form of paratexts.