《论语》两种英译本的对比研究

【摘要】：' Through his translating practice of the Bible, Eugene. A. Nida has proposed his translating theory--" functional equivalence". It states that the fOrm must be changed to preserve the content of the message, and the new focus of translating has shifted from the fOrm of the message to the response of the target language readers. Therefore, It has introduced a new principle of judging a translation: dynamic equivalence (or functional *. equivalence), which is to be defined in terms of the degree to which the receptor language readers respond to the message in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the source language. On the basis of the theory, this paper analyzes the two English Versions of the Chinese "Bible"--Analects Of Confucius ( % ). The analysis not only shows the significance of the theory of functional equivalence in translating classica1 Chinese works, but makes use of the findings of the Chinese-English 1 contrastive studies as well as some practical trans1ation skills. This paper consists of the following three chapters. Chapter One A Review of Translation Theories Chapter one introduces the various translation theories and thoughts in China and in the West from different points of view: the definition of translation, the standards for judging a translation, the basic process in translating, requisites fOr ' translators, etc. In particular, the approach of functional equivalence is discussed in detail because this comprehensive approach combines the study of words, sentences and contexts 1 in a cross-cultural communication environment, and emphasizes the reproduction of the message and the target readers' response rather than the form of the utterance. ' Chapter Two An Introduction to Anulects of ConftLcius In additiori to introducing the background and the content of Analects Of Confucius, this chapter deals mainly with its literary achievements and linguistic characteristics. The special features of the book such as the style of conversations, the wide use of - rhetorical devices, and the classical Chinese culture, etc. entail enormous difficulties in its translation. Chapter Three Translatiou Techniques A. The Lexical Level l. The meanings of words are the basic units of language that convey infOrmation, so the translation of words requires accuracy t and c1arity. But in ancient Chinese prose, one word usual1y has several meanings which vary with different contexts. So identifying the exact word meanings is an indispensable step in tran s lating. 2. Correspondence is a common method for transferring words. But we should learn to discriminate between reaI corre spondence and pseudo-correspondence. And the basis for the discrimination is "functional equivalence". 3. C1ssical Chinese tends to be concise but may sound rather , insipid, and emotions are usua1ly expressed only in a mild way. So the translator has to add some words to fully convey the implied emotions so that the English readers can ful1y 2 understand the translation just as the original readers understand the original text. 4. Repetition is very common in Chinese to emphasize some information or to form parallelism. To conform to the English language habit, the translator often has to replace the repetitive . parts with different words or phrases which express the same idea. 5. There is a tendency of using nouns and prepositions in English, while verbs play a predominant role in Chinese. So it is necessary to transfer some Chinese verbs into English noun phrases or prepositional phrases so that the translation sounds natural to the target language readers. B. The Syntactical Level - 1. Zero-subject sentences f The initial position of a Chinese sentence is usually occupied by the topic, which may not have a c1ose relation to the predicate. So there exist a large number of zero-subject sentences in Chinese. They need to be treated in translation by such methods as adding sub