English Translation Strategies of Lun Yu: A Post-colonial Approach〔*〕

Zhang Xiaoman,Peng Zhen

(School of Foreign Studies Hefei University of Technology, Hefei Anhui 230009)



English Translation Strategies of Lun Yu: A Post-colonial Approach〔*〕

Zhang Xiaoman,Peng Zhen

(School of Foreign Studies Hefei University of Technology, Hefei Anhui 230009)

This paper discusses English translation strategies of Lun Yu from the perspective of post-colonialism translation theory.Post-colonial translation theory makes research like cultural archaeology on translation practice,and influences translation practice through power difference of power discourse.It researches and interprets the translator’s conscious and unconscious value orientations and choices of strategy.Under its guidance,a research is made concerning the English translation of Lun Yu,and four strategies,namely,domestication,foreignization,hybridization and decolonization,are explicitly explained and analyzed.

postcolonial translation studies;translation strategy;the English translation of Lun Yu;power imbalance;hybridization;decolonization

Ⅰ.Post-colonial translation studies and its significance for the translation of Lun Yu

Postcolonial translation studies approaches translation from the perspective of empire and colonization,power relations and the contrast between the strong and the weak.It analyzes how translators,translating and translation are restricted by power relations on the one hand and how translators,translating and translation construct or deconstruct power relations on the other.It discusses translation through language and text,studies communication,exchange and influence between cultures,examines history and experience of cultural translation and surveys the imbalance and inequality of cultural translation.Standing up for weak nations,peoples and cultures,it fights against cultural hegemony and the aggression of dominant cultures.〔1〕

Many outstanding theorists,like Edward Said,〔2〕Lawrence Venuti,〔3〕Douglas Robinson,〔4〕Tejaswini Niranjana,〔5〕Sherry Simon〔6〕and Maria Tymoczko〔7〕are devoted to the study post-colonial translation theories and have made a series of achievements.Post-colonial translation theory is significant for translation practice in the following aspects.

Firstly,it provides us with a new perspective of translation research — putting translation activities into a real cultural and historical background.Translation is regarded as the product of the colonial culture and the tool of the imperialist power politics and cultural imperialism.In the process of colonial expansion and cultural aggression of imperialism,translation strategy is not only a problem of language or translation skills,but a kind of overturning political and cultural strategy in essence and the product of the unequal dialogue between the strong culture and the weak one in the context of power difference.

Secondly,it is useful for translation practice because it is related to power difference of power discourse,an important factor that influences translation practice.Post-colonialism stresses that production and circulation of translation are in accordance with the trading rules and owners in terms of business or ideology,and ultimately deny the translation ideal of pursuing semantic equivalence.

Thirdly,it researches and interprets the translator’s conscious and unconscious value orientations and strategy choices and how these external factors influence translation and translation process,and reveal historical conditions,power relations and translation violence in the translation process.

Fourthly,it plays the following roles in translation: the way of colonization,to keep parallel with education and to contact with each other as a kind of colonial channel;the tool of decolonization,as a way for strong cultural to control weak culture,at the same time as a weapon for the weak culture against the strong one;lightning rod of cultural inequality,and function as a shelter of cultural inequality after the collapse of the colonialism.

Lun Yu is a record of words and actions of Confucius and his disciples,focused on the thoughts of Confucius,and it is one of the classics of ancient Chinese Confucian culture.There are many researches on the English translation of Lun Yu such as vision studies,translator studies,speeches of correcting or publishing versions,communication history of translation,corn words,cross-cultural communication,the influence of the ideology,cultural translation strategies and so on,but most of them focus on the following three aspects: case study on the English translation,comparative study on the English translation and translation study on key works.This paper attempts to summarize effective strategies of the English translation of Lun Yu from the perspective of post-colonial translation theory.They are domestication,foreignization,hybridization and decolonization,which are helpful in spreading Chinese classics worldwide.

Ⅱ.Domestication

In the field of translation,selecting appropriate translation strategies has been a hot debate for the dissemination of cultural contents.Domestication and foreignization are two main strategies,and they have been the focus of controversy since their emergence.Domestication refers to the target-culture-oriented translation in which unusual expressions to the target culture are exploited and turned into some familiar ones so as to make the translated texts intelligible and easy for the target readers.The debate on domestication or foreignization can be viewed as the extension of the debate on literal translation and free translation,and literal translation is also known as word-for-word translation.Domestication is used in the following three ways.

Firstly,the translator uses domestication to process lexical elements in the source text.In terms of vocabulary,Pound has adopted the strategy of domestication.In his opinion,the translation of concept words is less formal.For example,“君子” is generally expressed by “highbred”,which does not reflect philosophical text properties of Lun Yu better but too popularized.This is bound to make the readers misunderstand the general sense of moral and ethical preaching book and ignore the philosophical textual properties.〔8〕

Secondly,the translator uses domestication to process syntactic elements in the source text.For example,子曰:“君子无所争。必也射乎!揖让而升,下而饮。其争也君子。Ku Hung-Ming’s version: Confucius remarked,“A gentleman never competes in anything he does,— except in archery.But even then,when he wins he courteously makes his bow before he advances to make his place among the winners;and when he has lost he walks down and drinks his cup of forfeit.Thus,even in this case of competition,he shows himself to be a gentleman.”(辜鸿,1898:16) Here,we can see that the vision of the English translation of Lun Yu adopts master-slave structure of complex sentence with an obvious hypotactic features;extensive use of connection means such as pronouns and conjunctions is to increase the coherence of the translation;lexical selection is normal vocabulary in order to increase the fluency and transparency.Overall,the translation is close to the specification of English language to let foreign readers easily accept in order to spread the Chinese classic.

Thirdly,the translator uses domestication to interrelate the original cultural phenomenon or periods of history through a large number of comments and cites “similar” cultural phenomenon or periods of history in western cultures in order to highlight the commonality between the eastern and western cultures.For example,the annotation of Qi and Lu are separately “the France of the Chinese history” and “the England of Chinese history”,so Qi is compared to Chinese history of France and Lu is compared to Chinese history of Britain.Comments on the book of songs are called the Canon of Poetry,one of the so called five classics,and the Confucian classics is compared to be “Chinese Bible”.

Ⅲ.Foreignization

Foreignization is a kind of source culture oriented translation strategy,and it tries to retain the original flavor of the source language and culture as far as possible.Those who are in favor of free translation tend to choose language as the purpose,and sacrifice the form of the source language in order to maintain elegance of the original.James Legge mainly uses foreignization in the translation of concept words and its characteristics are based on the fact that the same concept words have different meanings in different sections,and he uses different objective vocabularies to translate the same concept of source language words.For instance,“君子” is translated as different phrases such as “a man of complete virtue”,“the superior man”and “the accomplished scholar” according to different contexts.The processing method is much more appropriate because “君子” refers to people in high social status or the people with a noble character or people with the characters of a gentleman scholar in the time of Confucius.He translates “小人” as “the mean man”,“the small man” and “obstinate little men”;“义” is “what is right”,“righteousness”,“just”,“the duties due to men”;“礼” is translated as “propriety”,“what is proper”,“the regulations,the rites of propriety”,and “ceremonies” and so on.“仁”is “benevolent actions”,“true virtue”,“the good”,“the virtues proper to humanity”,“the excellence”,“virtue”,and so on.His translation varies according to different concepts of these nouns in different contexts in order to avoid repetition.

The translator also adopts foreignization to process cultural elements in the source text such as concepts,customs,habits and behaviors.From the point of view of etymological analysis,the left half of “亻” of “仁” refers to the people,and the right half of the “二” interprets the meaning,that is,at least two individuals as members of the human race are in the interrelated and dependent connection.To achieve the ideal personality of life is an important part of Confucius’ ethics.The various meanings of “仁” in different contexts are considered in the English vision of Lun Yu of Legge,so the translation also has a variety of expressions.The word of “virtue” well reflects that “仁” is a king of virtue as one of the five constant virtues of Confucianism,which reflects the translation strategy of foreignization that is faithful to the original text.

According to the record of shuo wen jie zi,the left half of “礻” of “禮” refers to God,and the right half of “豊” refers to the sacrificial vessels,which together refers behavior of contribution to the God.The so-called “father and father,son and son” in the Lun Yu emphasizes the hierarchy.“礼”of the ethics includes filial piety,kindness,respect,benevolence,righteousness,specifically four aspects: ceremony with king,the father,friends and God.The correct understanding of the core concept of “礼”is helpful to deeply understand the profound connotation of Confucius’ philosophy thought.Legge’s translation of“礼”is simple basically around the word “propriety”.According to textual research,his vision takes Zhu Xi’s notes in the Ming Dynasty as the main reference.Thus he adopts the strategy of foreignization to translate Zhu Xi’s annotation as “what is proper” in order to introduce the Chinese culture to the native missionaries.

Ⅳ.Hybridization

Hybridization refers that the language translation of colonial countries is a kind of mixed language,because it is same as the process that the intrinsic characteristics of the colonial language are to be removed for the colonial countries and it is also same as the characteristics of their languages.However,translation is always inevitable with the imprint of the original culture.The colonial states originally want to keep the translation texts in line with its colonial interests,but as a result,hybridization has been produced.Both sides in the process of cultural interaction start to rethink the past fixed ideas and values,then a vague “the other” is simulated,and it is also a mixed product.From this point of view,cultural differences in cultural exchanges have brought us a dialectical restructuring space.

Hybridization is an important post-colonial view of Homi Bhabha.〔9〕He begins with hybridization of the theory,and further discusses it in different texts and cultures.In his view,the theory is constructed from the reality,so it is not purely and completely neutral,and always contains a bias for the power of the dominant party and the opposite of this power.And it is mixed because its theory reflects the mixed state of the reality.In the process of translation,Homi Bhabha〔10〕advocates that translators should be competent matchmakers who bring two kinds of cultures and languages into the “third space” where the two cultures leave the center of themselves,and then makes a consultation and dialogue about the differences between each other on the basis of equality and harmony atmosphere,further to build the new culture of “the other”.Eventually annexation between the strong culture and the weak one can be avoided and the loss of colorful culture caused by the neglect of vulnerable cultural differences can also be avoided;it also can avoid a narrow nationalism and other forms of native cultural centralism of weak culture to become the strength of the new culture.

Han Ziman points out that hybridization of the translation mainly deals with three aspects: language,culture and literature norms.In the English translation of Lun Yu,we also pay much attention to these aspects.〔11〕

In terms of language,hybridization is mainly reflected in the translation of cultural loaded words,and a kind of cultural concept or thing is often difficult to find the same one in another culture because each culture has its uniqueness.In Ku Hung-Ming’s version of Lun Yu,he supplies a kind of cultural specialty to the western readers to spread Chinese culture.He translates “仁” as “moral life”,“moral character” or “moral sense”.He believes that its basic meaning is about moral thought.He interprets the meaning of “仁” in Lun Yu from a moral perspective in order to strengthen moral philosophy,further to exhibit Chinese ethical and moral system to Westerners.

In terms of culture,hybridization is used to further demonstrate the characteristics of translation.For instance,Ku Hung-Ming translates the name of “管仲” into “Kuan Chung” or “Bismarque in China”,and “尧” is translated into “Yao” who is an analogy with “the Abraham of Chinese history”.The place name of “泰山” is translated into “T’ai mountain” which is an analogy with “an imperial prerogative”.These names,place names,national names and titles bear the Chinese classical culture,and Ku Hung-Ming makes an analogy between the two cultures,and tries to find the coincidence between Confucian culture and western culture,and further to bring the former into the latter’s horizon,and even effectively highlights the hybridization of versions of language and culture,and enhances the international status of Chinese culture.

In terms of literary norms,Lun Yu,typical of Chinese quotations prose,performs as a speech collection about Confucian and his disciples.The content of the conversation is generally written down in the quotations of the body,and Ku Hung-Ming’s vision basically retains the literary style and usual “record” writing narrative way of Lun Yu in his translation.He uses text or poetry to interpret text or poetry in order to further reproduce the original style.He translates “子夏问曰:‘巧笑倩兮,美目盼兮,素以为绚兮’。何谓也?”into “Her coquettish smiles,How dimpling they are;her beautiful eyes,How becoming they are;O fairest is she,who is simple and plain.” He translates the sentence with the form of poetry that faithfully delivers the style of the original text and also vividly shows the gorgeous screen to readers,and highlights the hybridization of stylistic norms of the translation.

Ⅴ.Decolonization

The selection of literary texts to be translated into home culture can reflect the consciousness of decolonization of two countries.For most of countries,only literary texts that are not different from cultures of target languages can be translated;therefore,translators in a weak culture consciously choose literary texts to achieve equality in cultural communication.Their attitudes reflect a strong challenge for western cultural norms.For instance,in Lin Yutang’s version of Lun Yu,he rearranges 20 articles and 512 quotations according to the structure in order to facilitate the understanding of western readers,and he selects its essence,excerpts and 203 quotations that specially show Confucius’ humor,generosity and wisdom to reclassify through a comprehensive study of the subject.The version is divided into 10 sections according to the nature of the thought: description of Confucius by himself,the emotional and artistic life of Confucius,the conversational style,the Johnsonian touch,wit and wisdom,humanism and true manhood,the superior man and the inferior man,the mean as the ideal character and types of persons that Confucius hated,government,and sayings on education,ritual and poetry.

Systematic transliteration is a mapping from one system of writing into another,typically grapheme to grapheme.Most transliteration systems are one-to-one,so a reader who knows the system can reconstruct the original spelling.It is also an example of transliterating to achieve this objective,and transliteration may define complex conventions for dealing with letters in a source script which do not correspond with letters in a goal script.There are plenty of culture-loaded words in Lun Yu,and translators take a careful processing by using the strategy of transliteration.Paraphrasing is a second way of decolonization.The diaphragm generated by the historical background of the original,special rules of two languages,national customs,and the specific language environment result in the difficulty to exactly express the true meaning of the original in the translation,and literal translation sometimes makes irrelevant meaning between the original and the translation be clear;therefore,the paraphrasing strategy is adopted on the basis of understanding of the original.

Character Splitting is also a way of decolonization.It uses the feature of Chinese characters that can be spitted,and loss and gain changes,and clutch induction of character shapes,strokes and radicals are processed to change the original shape.

Pound put Chinese characters to use specifically from the perspective of Chinese culture,and makes some of the most innovative deconstructions and exertions.Sometimes it is very superficial,even puzzled,for the effect of his translation in some readers’ views,and some translation critics have quite a few disagreed opinions with Pound’s translation methods.But his interpretation and deconstruction of Chinese characters make us find something new and fresh,and each Chinese character contains infinite vitality and vigor in his works,and his understanding of Chinese characters in the translation exactly reflects his piety for Confucius,respect for Chinese traditional culture and deep concern with Chinese culture.He is very obsessed with Chinese characters,and his perseverance in studying makes him apply them to the creation of translation from the previous ignorance to master the ideographic and pictographic features of Chinese characters,and it makes a certain aesthetic effect,and his interest also makes him understand some essence to Confucianism and becomes the key to the interpretation of Lun Yu.Take “子曰：‘君子不言，则不威；学则不固。主忠信’。for example,” Pound translated it into “ He said: gentlemen with no weight will not be revered;his style of study lacks vigor.First: get to the middle of the mind;then stick to your word.” In the translation,Pound analyzes the two Chinese characters of “忠”and“信”.“忠” is the pictophonetic character,and it is translated into “get to the middle of the mind”,which is extremely consistent with the intention of the character,and the meaning is also very accurate and clear,and it also highlights the Confucianism that seriously pays more attention to the introspection and the inner moral accomplishment.“信” is an associative compound character,and “人” is on the left and “言” is on the right,which means that we must abide by what we have said.Human beings should be honest,and Pound is also aware of the point,so the character is translated as “stick to your word”.The English translation of unique Chinese pictophonetic and pictographic characters reflects his profound understanding for Chinese language and culture.

Amplification is also used to increase some words in the translation to faithfully express the ideological content of the original according to the need of sense (or rhetoric) and syntactic aspects.The translation strategy is to express the meaning more accurately,smoothly and completely.Of course,the amplification cannot be applied at random,but increases some nonexistent words that have meaning in the texts.

〔1〕Zhang Xiaoman,Fountainhead of Postcolonial Translation Studies and Its Controlling Ideas,Academics,2011(12),pp.245-254.

〔2〕爱德华·W·萨义德：《东方学》，王宇跟译，北京：生活·读书·新知三联书店，2007年。

〔3〕Lawrence Venuti,The Translator’s Invisibility:A History of Translation,Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2004.

〔4〕Douglas Robinson,Translation and Empire: Postcolonial Theories Explained.Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,2007.

〔5〕Tejaswini Niranjana,Sitting Translation: History,Post-Structuralism,and the Colonial Context.Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press,1992.

〔6〕Sherry Simon,Gender in Translation: Culture Identity and the Politics of Transmission,London and New York: Routledge,1996.

〔7〕Maria Tymoczko & Edwin Gentzler.Translation and Power,Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press,2002.

〔8〕边立红：《“君子”英译现象的文化透视》，《外语学刊》2006年第4期，第94-99页。

〔9〕〔10〕Homi K.Bhabha,The Location of Culture,London and New York:Routledge,1994.

〔11〕韩子满：《文学翻译与杂合》，《中国翻译》2002年第2期，第54-58页。

About the author：Zhang Xiaoman,associate professor at the School of Foreign Studies,Hefei University of Technology;Peng Zhen,postgraduate student at the School of Foreign Studies,Hefei University of Technology.

〔*〕This paper is supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Program of the Ministry of Education in 2016(16YJA740013),by Philosophy and Social Science Program of Anhui Province in 2014(AHSKY2014D140),and by the program of Foreign Languages Teaching and Research of National Institutions of Higher Learning (2015AH0034A).