林语堂和亚瑟·威利《道德经》英译本对比研究

论文总字数：41389字

摘 要

《道德经》是一部具有崇高地位的中国古代典籍，被联合国教科文组织列为除《圣经》外被翻译成外国文字次数最多的文化名著。《道德经》英译本数量庞大，其中以英国著名翻译家亚瑟·威利的译本最为著名。而林语堂作为留学海外的中国学者，他的《道德经》英译本则与原作者老子的思想距离更近，内容也更原汁原味。

本论文通过对亚瑟·威利与林语堂的《道德经》英译本进行比较研究，得出译者在翻译中华典籍时的指导原则，目的是能够对日后的中文典籍翻译工作起到规范性、指导性的意义，更好地推动中文典籍翻译工作的取得新的进展，从而让世界更深入地了解中国文化，提升中国的文化自信。

本论文主要通过文献研究法进行研究，以亚瑟·威利与林语堂的《道德经》英译本为研究对象，研究二者的文体风格，并节选二者对第33章和第40章的译文，从语义内涵、文化意象两个方面对两个译本进行比较，进而探讨译者在翻译中华典籍时的指导原则。

通过研究可以得出，中国古代汉语里所具有的丰富含义和美感在翻译的过程中会有一定程度上的丢失与曲解。由于译者主体性不同，导致他们在翻译中文典籍时的语言准确性也不同。因此，译者在翻译中文典籍前要做好材料准备工作，多阅读相关的评注材料。在英译中国古代典籍时，译者既要对中国传统文化有很深的理解，也要有很高的外国文学水平。在翻译过程中，译者要忠于原文的内容，同时用词要生动、准确。

关键词：典籍翻译；翻译指导原则；道德经；林语堂；亚瑟·威利

Abstract

Tao Te King is an ancient Chinese classic which is listed by UNESCO as the cultural classic that has been translated into foreign languages most times except the Bible. Among a lot of English translations of Tao Te King, Arthur Waley’s is the most famous one. And as Lin Yutang is a Chinese scholar studying abroad, the minds of his translation is closer to the thoughts of Lao Tzu’s original text.

Through the comparative study of Waley’s and Lin’s English translations of Tao Te King, this paper draws the guiding principles of translators to translate Chinese classics into English. The purpose of this paper is to better promote the new progress of Chinese classics translations, so as to let people in the world have a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and enhance the cultural confidence of Chinese people.

This paper mainly uses literature research method. The content of this study are studying these two translator’s translation styles, comparing their translations of chapters 33 and 40 from the aspects of semantic connotation and cultural image, and concluding their guiding ideas translating Chinese classics.

Through research, it can be concluded that the rich meaning and beauty of ancient Chinese language will be lost and distorted in the process of translating. Due to different subjectivities of translators, their linguistic accuracy is also different. Therefore, translators should prepare relevant literary criticism and comment materials before translating Chinese classics. And they should not only know about Chinese traditional culture, but also be good at foreign literature and writing. In the process of translating, translators should be faithful to the content of original texts and use vivid and accurate words to translate them.

Key Words: Chinese Classics Translation; Translating Guiding Principles; Tao Te King; Lin Yutang; Arthur Waley

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

摘要

Abstract

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Research Purpose 2

1.3 Research Significance 2

1.4 Layout of the Thesis 3

Chapter Two Literature Review 5

2.1 The Development Situation of Chinese Classics Translation 5

2.2 The Development Situation of English Versions of Tao Te King 5

2.3 Translation Guiding Principles 9

Chapter Three Constractive Study on English Versions of Tao Te King Translated by Arthur Waley and Lin Yutang 12

3.1 Contrastive Study on Transaltion Style 13

3.2 Contrastive Study on Semantic Meaning 14

3.3 Contrastive Study on Cultural Image 15

3.4 Characteristics of Their Chinese Classics Translations 16

3.5 Translating Ideas of Chinese Classics 17

3.5.1 Arthur Waley’s Ideas of Translating Chinese Classics 17

3.5.2 Lin Yutang’s Ideas of Translating Chinese Classics 18

Chapter Four Conclusion 19

References 20

Chapter One Introduction

• 1. Research Background

With the progress of times and the advance in science and technology, the political and economic ties of all the countries in the world are strengthened, and their cultural exchanges are developed. As one of the four great ancient civilizations, China has a splendid history of more than five thousand years which is recorded in numerous books. It can be said that classics are the important carriers of Chinese culture and Chinese civilization.

As the act of transforming one kind of language information into another language, translation is the channel and bridge of the transnational, cross-cultural and cross-language communication activities. Through translation, the ancient Chinese classics bearing the five thousand years of excellent Chinese culture can be disseminated around the world, which is conductive to letting other countries in the world understand Chinese history, unique philosophy and its cultural system better. Besides, it is also conductive to embodying China’s cultural soft power, enhancing its cultural self-confidence, strengthening identify as a cultural power, and building a multicultural world. Thus, it is necessary to study the translation guiding principles of Chinese classics, which will get constructive suggestions for the translation work of classics in the future and spread Chinese culture better.

Tao Te King, as an important source of Taoist philosophy, is an ancient Chinese classic with far-reaching national cultural significance and lofty status, which has a profound impact on the world outlook, outlook on life and values of Chinese people in later generations. It has been listed as the cultural masterpiece most frequently translated into foreign languages by UNESCO besides the Bible. There are a large number of English versions of Tao Te King, among which the most famous one is that of Arthur Waley, a well-known Sinologist and translator in Britain. And Lin Yutang, as a Chinese scholar studying aboard, his English version of Tao Te King is closer to the thoughts of its original author, Lao Tzu.

This paper makes comparative studies of the English versions of Tao Te King by Arthur Waley and Lin Yutang, and then discusses the Chinese classics translating guiding principles for translators, which are helpful for better developing the translation of Chinese classics and make a constructive contribution to the international communication of Chinese classics in the future.

• 1. Research Purpose

Through comparative studies of the English versions of Tao Te King by Arthur Waley and Lin Yutang, this paper explores the Chinese classics translating guiding principles. The purpose is to play a normative and guiding role in the translation of Chinese classics in the future, so as to better promote the foreign exchange and communication of Chinese culture and the ideological and cultural connotation behind it, and promote the construction and development of a multicultural world while enhancing Chinese people’s cultural self-confidence.

• 1. Research Significance

With the development of the cultural exchanges between countries all over the world, the role of translation in which is taken seriously increasingly. As the main carriers of Chinese traditional culture, the English versions of Chinese classics are in the spread of far-reaching significance on Chinese culture and cross-cultural communication. At present, China attaches great importance to the dissemination of Chinese culture, and has made a lot of efforts to it. Therefore, studying the translating guiding principles of classics is in line with the needs of China.

Besides, the quality of the translation of classics directly influences foreign readers’ interpretation and study of Chinese culture. Foreign readers often regard English version of Chinese classics as the Chinese text itself, and the English translation of the Chinese concept as the Chinese concept itself, even if sometimes they are not in the same meanings. Therefore, doing a comparative study of the representative English versions of Chinese classics, making a scientific summary of those characteristics of different English versions and concluding the translating guiding principles of classics will be of great help to improve the quality of the Chinese classics’ English versions.

Finally, as the most frequently translated ancient Chinese classics, the English versions of Tao Te King are excellent in both quantity and quality. The conclusions drawn from the comparative studies of its representative English versions are of great significance for the sustainable development of Chinese classics.

• 1. Layout of the Thesis

This thesis is made up of five parts.

Chapter one is a brief introduction of the background, purposes, significances and the structure of this paper.

Chapter two is about the literature review. This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part is about the development situation of Chinese classics translation. The second part is about the development situation of English versions of Tao Te King, and this part talks about the situation of Tao Te King translating into English and the research about English versions Tao Te King. The third part is about the translating guiding principles.

Chapter three is about the translation guiding principles while translating Chinese classics. In this chapter the author mainly focus on two famous translators, Arthur Waley and Lin Yutang, to introduce their principles on translating Chinese classics.

Chapter three is the main part of this thesis. In this part the author does contrastive studies on English versions of Tao Te King translated by Lin Yutang and Arthur Waley. The contrastive study mainly focuses on translation style, semantic meaning, cultural image of words used in these two versions. At the end of this chapter, the author makes a conclusion about their translating characteristics and their own translating ideas when they translate Chinese classics into English.

Chapter four is the conclusion. Based on the study on the two English versions of Tao Te King translated by Arthur Waley and Lin Yutang, the author summarizes the Chinese classics translating guiding principles for translators.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 The Development Situation of Chinese Classics Translation

Nowadays, economic globalization has promoted the cultural exchanges among countries. As a great cultural country with brilliant civilization of more than five thousand years, it is necessary for China to introduce our culture to the world, so that people of other countries can know about China and experience our extensive and profound culture. As the long history and civilization are recorded in voluminous ancient books, the translation texts become the key to promote the going-out strategy for Chinese culture, and the quality of English versions of Chinese classics directly affect the impact of Chinese culture on the world. Gu (2015) says that the translation of Chinese classics into English has been attached great importance since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and made great progress after the reform and opening up. However, there are still some problems in the translation work of our country, such as single selection of translation materials, disconnection between theory and practice, weak external communication and lack of English translating talents.

To develop the quality of English translating of Chinese Classics and complete the task of the external dissemination of Chinese culture better, China set up the Library of Chinese Classics project in 1995. This is the first time that Chinese government enforces a major national publishing project to launch foreign versions of Chinese classics systematically and comprehensively to the world. The contents of this series of books include the most representative one hundred kinds of works covering Chinese culture, history, philosophy, economy, military, science and technology and other fields, and are translated by professional scholars. This is one of the major achievements of our country’s translation works.

2.2 The Development Situation of English Versions of Tao Te King

According to the statistics of the national social science fund project organized by Ding Wei, a scholar of Henan Academy of Social Science, Tao Te King is the most abundant Chinese classics in English translation, and the number of it is 182.

Britain was the first country where people disseminated English versions of Tao Te King. And the earliest English version was translated by British missionaries in China. In 1568, the first English translation of Tao Te King was completed by John Chalmers, a protestant missionary in China in late Qing dynasty. In 1876, Legge James, a British missionary and famous sinologist, began to translate Tao Te King and add it to The Sacred Books of the East in 1891. During this period, the characteristics of the English translations of Tao Te King are that the translators were greatly influenced by Christianity, so that they used a lot of Christian terms to interpret the concepts of Tao Te King.

In 1934, the English version of Tao Te King translated by Arthur Waley was published as The Way of Power: a Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought, and this is said to be the most famous English translation of Tao Te King.

In the United States, the translation and research of Tao Te King is also very active. For example, in 1948 Lin Yutang published The wisdom of Laotse, in 1963 Chen Wing-tsit wrote The Way of Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, and in 1989 Robert G. Henricks published Lao-Tzu Te-Tao Ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts.

In China, the first English version of Tao Te King was translated by Hu Tse Ling which was published in 1936. Since then, there have been more and more scholars translating Tao Te King, such as Chu Ta-kao in 1937, John C. H. Wu in 1939, and D. C. Lau in 1963. After in 1970 the silk manuscripts of Tao Te King were discovered, D. C. Lau revised his translation. Besides, Gu Zhenkun’s translation of Tao Te King was also based on the silk manuscripts.

There are a great number of researches about the English translation of Tao Te King, the most frequently translated ancient Chinese classic. At present, domestic studies on the English version of Tao Te King mainly focus on the following aspects:

1. The appreciation of Tao Te King English versions

This kind of research is really common, and it is to appreciate the selected chapters or key words of the English versions of Tao Te King from the accuracy of words, the aesthetics of language and the translators’ language style, so as to evaluate the quality of translations. Hao (2011) makes comparative studies between three English versions of Tao Te King which are translated by James Legge, Arthur Waley and D.C.Lau, analyzes the similarities and differences about the translation of core words and concepts. Liang (2008) makes a study in aspects of language styles, semantics and cultural taste by comparing the versions translated by Arthur, Xu Yuanchong and Gu Zhengkun.

1. The translation history of Tao Te King

This kind of research mainly introduces the English translation history of Tao Te King and several representative famous versions. Hao (2011) respectively talks about the translating history of Tao Te King in Britain, America and China.

1. The study about the translation strategies

The kind of research mainly evaluates the quality and value of English versions of Tao Te King according to some translation theories, such as the eco-translation and hermeneutics. Under the perspective of hermeneutics and fusion of horizons, Kuang (2016) says that Tao Te Ching contains abundant information so that translators can explain the texts at both linguistic and cultural levels more freely, and a successful translation needs translator to make lots of efforts to fuse horizons of different translation subjects during his process of translation. With the guidance of hermeneutics, Li (2008) says that Waley and Gu Zhengkun misunderstand the meanings of some sentences in Tao Te King, Addiss and Stanley Lombardo just keep the form equal but fail in conveying the deep meaning of sentences, and Xu Yuanchong not only keeps the beauty of form but also render the underlying meaning of sentences. Zhang (2011) says that the translator should make a perfect union of domestication and foreignization strategies to carry forward the traditional Chinese culture. Liang (2008) says that translators’ preparation about the knowledge of the original work is a crucial requirement for a successful translation.

1. The translator’s subjectivity in translating Chinese classics.

This kind of research is mainly about how translators’ backgrounds effect their translations. Gu Zhengkun has the same propose as Waley, so he uses explaining words while translating the text and keeps the beauty of the original form. Li (2008) says that the reason that Waley, Addiss and Stanley Lombardo cannot explain the deep meaning of sentences in Tao Te King correctly is that they are limited by their social backgrounds. Miao (2002) says that the translator’s subjectivity is embodied in three aspects: the selection of original texts and notes, the understanding about the original texts, and the process Chinese texts translating into English. Ren (2018) says that the differences between the two English translation of Tao Te King translated by Arthur Waley and Lin Yutang come from the differences in these two translators’ backgrounds and their purposes of translating.

1. Cross-cultural communication.

This kind of research focuses on the role and influence of the English versions of Tao Te King in the international communication of Chinese culture, the mode of cross-cultural communication, and the importance of the translator in the process of cultural communication. Liang (2008) says that better translation of ancient classics makes contribution to the development and transmission of Chinese culture. Tao Te King as the essence of Chinese culture attracts the interest of translators and scholars around the world and becomes a popular influential thought throughout the world. Tao and Yu (2013) say that in the process of translating Tao Te King into English translators will produce the foreginization in phonetics, image and structure, which is the promotion of many new expression and multicultural merge. Wang (2013) concludes modes of intercultural communication competence of English translation of Chinese classics basing on the analysis of the English version of Tao Te King: translator’s comprehensive of Chinese classics, translator’s comprehensive competence of intercultural transmission theories, translators’ competence of multi-cultural perspective, translators’ comprehensive competence of translation theories and translator’s translation competence.

1. The current researches on culture-loaded languages translation.

This kind of research is mainly about the analysis of the appropriateness of those words containing cultural images and the translation quality in the text of Tao Te King, so as to evaluate the translators’ ability of cultural image transformation. The extension direction of this type of research is the western translators’ mistranslation of Tao Te King. Hua (2010) says that in order to avoid falling into a trap of cultural presupposition and mistranslating, translators not only should be alert to the cultural presupposition in translators’ mind, but also should have a good knowledge of the local cultural presupposition of the original texts. Zhang (2012) says that some culture-loaded words used in different language communities share some overlapping parts which promise translatability. However, some considerable differences also exist together with the translation. To make compensation for the cultural loss during the translation, it is important for a translator to keep a good balance between the source-language text and the target-language text.

2.3 Translation Guiding Principles

While talking about the translation guiding principles, the first one could be mentioned is the triple principle of translation which Yan Fu put forward in his translation of Evolution and Ethics. In this book, Yan (1898) says that translation involves three requirements difficult to fulfill: faithfulness, comprehensibility, and elegance. Faithfulness is difficult enough to attain but a translation that is faithful but not comprehensible is translation at all. In his view, faithfulness means that translators should be faithful to the original texts, which requires translators to deeply understand the contents of original texts and accurately express the original authors’ meaning to readers completely; comprehensiveness requires that translators not to rigidly adhere to the form of original texts; elegance means that words that translators used in their translations should be concise, vivid and graceful. The phrase “faithfulness, comprehensiveness, and elegance” has been treated as a standard for any good translation.

In terms of the translation method, it can be divided into literal translation and free translation. Literal translation requires that translators should give priority to being faithful to the contents of original texts, put being faithful to the form of source texts in the second place, and the smooth translation from in the third place. And in free translation, being faithful to the content of original texts comes first, the smooth translation form comes second, and the fidelity to the form of original texts comes third.

However, Lin Yutang (1933) believes that the name of the translation method should enable people to understand what the method represents from the name alone. Since translators are engaged in translating activities with words or sentences as the main body of the original text translation, the method can be divided into word-for-word translation and sentence-for-sentence translation. Word-for-word translation refers to the translation method in which the translator translates texts word by word, while sentence-for-sentence translation refers to the translation method in which the translator treats the meaning of each word as a part of the “general meaning” of a sentence, understands the “general meaning” of the sentence thought those words, and then expresses the “general meaning” with the translating target language using habit.

In the translation process, translators will use the following two methods, domestication and foreginization, to help those target language readers understand the foreign culture better and at the same time let the foreign culture be accepted by the cultural atmosphere of the target language country. Zhang (2011) says “the aim of domesticating translation is to create a fluent translation in the target language environment, and foreignizing translation is a dissident cultural practice, maintaining a refusal of the dominant by developing affiliations with marginal linguistic and cultural values in the receiving situation.”

In addition to what has been mentioned above, some scholars have put forward the translation guiding principle of “drawing on each other’s strength to make up for one’s weakness” from the perspective of cultural exchanges. Song and Xu（2003）say that people have always been accustomed to pay attention to practical issues due to the influence of traditional theoretical research methods for a long time. As literary translation belongs to the category of cultural exchange, the guiding principles of literary translation should be restricted by the guiding principles of cultural exchange. It is in line with the purpose of cultural exchanges to establish the translation principles of “learning from each other and making up for each other”. A good tradition of culture itself can be inherited, carried forward and evolved, and new energy can be added to itself by absorbing and integrating various advantages of foreign cultures, so as to promote and accelerate its own development. With the guidance of this translation principle, the translation can not only be more novel, but also retain the artistic value and charm of the original texts in the translation.

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