生态翻译视角下的辜鸿铭

生态翻译视角下的辜鸿铭《论语》英译研究

I believe that smartand intellectual western readers and scholars can think about Chinese and Chinese cultur e from a brand-new perspective, get rid of prejudice and have a more positive attitude towards and Chinese tradition al culture and China.” That means Ku Hungming hopes to change the western attitude towards China and give up t he the violence of imperialist.

Translation purpose is of vital importance in the process of a text, and we can know Ku’s English version tra nslation of Lun Yu is fit for temporal social background and has a great influence on Chinese and westerners.

3.Embodiment of the Principles of Eco-translatology Adaptation in Ku Hungming's English Translation of Lun Y u

3.1 Adaptation of the Translational Eco-environment

Lefevere once said:” translators function plays an important role in a given culture at a given time.” At the be ginning, we have introduced the history and times background-eco-environment where Ku Hungming lives, because s ome special times and history bac kground will greatly influence translators’ thinking and behaviors. Eco-environment i s closely connected with the following factors, including society, politics, culture and communication.

3.1.1 Society and Politics

Before 1840, China is an independent country, and westerners regard China as a mysterious, old and magica l country with all kind of goods everywhere and endless natural resources. In fact, because of the complement of cl ose-door policy for a long time, it seriously hinders the development and enhancement of Chinese society. However, western countries, such as England, France and others have began industrial revolution, and the production takes p lace of hand labor, creating plenty of wealth and excellent science technology, which produces huge energy more th an previous sum of all times. However, the quick development of western countries also deepens capital contraction, and they need to conquer more countries to enlarge their power, and China is one of their destinations. Although Qing Dynasty has rich resources, yet the close-door policy makes him behind the world trend. Western countries sta rt their attacks to China, and China can’t withstand the force of imperialism, and they have to sign the first unequal treaty-Nanjing Treaty, which marks the beginning of semi-colonial and semi -feudal society. After Nanjing Treaty, a s

eries of unequal treaties are signed. Therefore, some intellectuals begin start their journey of saving China, calming “Chinese learning as the fundamental structure and western learning for practical use”. This is the special stage in C hina’s history Ku Hungming experiences.

3.1.2 Culture

Culture is closely connected with politics, and politics influences various aspects of culture. In the late ninetee nth century and early twentieth century, faced with the aggressions of western countries, some Chinese begin to thin k of Chinese culture. Different people have different ideas. Some advocate we should learn from western countries, and others have a opposite suggestion, and the culture collision appears little by little. Especially after the war betwe en China and Japan in1894, some people like Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei and others advocate constitutional monar chy system and capitalism. But their measures and actions end up with failure. The theme “Chinese learning as the fundamental structure and western learning for practical use” means Chinese traditional culture is the base and west ern culture and technology is the supplement, and both of them contribute to the development of China society.

Ku Hungming believes imitating completely western countries cannot help Qing Dynasty get rid of the present situation, and meanwhile, foreigners can’t look up to Chinese forever if we don’t change the current situation. The o nly way for us to let westerners show respect to Chinese people and Chinese nation is to make them understand C hinese culture-a nation with its own thinking and civilization. Therefore, it is urgent for Chinese to spread Chinese cu lture and show the colorful Chinese civilization. It is a must for Ku Hungmign to translate Lun Yu with such times a nd history background.

3.1.3 Communication

Because of a series of unequal treaties, China becomes the aggression target by more and more countries, p lunging into semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. Therefore, intercultural communication is not equal, and westerners look down upon Chinese nation and Chinese culture, only regarding western world as the center of the earth. Altho ugh China does not fully fall into colony, western colonizers show their contempt from the bottom of their heart. For example, Samoar once writes the following words in his book Understanding Intercultural Communication: stereotypes also keep us from being successful as communicators, because they are oversimplified, overgeneralized and exagge

rated. From that, we can see Chinese nation and Chinese civilization is belittled by those who don’t have any conce pt in their minds about China. In order to eradicate the prejudice and communicate equally between China and west ern countries, Ku Hungming decides to introduce Chinese classical culture to the western world, and Lun Yu, which is filled with Chinese culture spirit, is his best choice.

Thus, all factors including society, politics, culture and communication contribute t o the Lun Yu’s translation. E co-environment plays an important role in the process of Lun Yu’s translation.

3.2 Translator's Adaptation

Ku Hungming’s success in the translation of Lun Yu is closely connected with his own experiences.

3.2.1 Ku Hungming’s Ab ility in English and Chinese

Ku Hungming is born in Malaysia where many oversea Chinese who have deep patriotic feelings live there in 1857, and his hometown is in Fujian Province where his grandfather and father once live, and they serve for the g overnment of English colonists. His mother can speak English and Portuguese. When he is ten, he moves to Englan d with his adoptive father, and he studies in England for a long time and is admitted into University of Edinburgh, m ajoring in literatures, including Pa radise Lost, Faust, Shakespeare’s plays and others. His teacher is Scotland famous essayist and historian, Carlyle, and under the guidance of his teacher, Ku completes his postgraduate courses succ essfully, and at that time he is only twenty years old. To our surprise, he masters more than ten kinds of languages, including English, Spanish, French, and Greek and so on.

His fluent English can’t be separated with his western education experience. Lin Yutang once said:” no one in China has the ability to overp ass Ku’s English level.” His English is full of elegance, wit and fluency. Ku doesn’t st udy Chinese systematically until 1882 when he meets an official of Qing Government called Ma Jianzhong. Form Ma, Ku Hungming really experiences the thinking and essence of Chinese classical culture falls in love with Chinese cla ssical culture. In 1883, he comes back to China for the first time, feeling the beauty of motherland’s rivers and mou ntains, but he also has a complex emotion to the temporal situation of China. Before long, Ku goes to Hongkong to study Chinese, especially digging into Chinese classical literatures. His talent in languages is found by Zhang Zhido

ng who masters Sinology, and Ku studies them harder and harder, memorizing lots of Chinese classical literature, w hich lays a solid basis to the subsequent Lun Yu’s translation.

Since then, the background of knowing Chinese and English makes Ku Hungming completely adapt to the rol e of translating Chinese classical literatures. Good knowledge of languages helps Ku to successfully translate Lun Y u.

3.2.2 Ku Hungming’s Cultural Orientation

In addition to translators’ adaptation in Chinese and English, cultural orientation of translators also plays an im portant role in the process of Ku Hungming’s translation. At the very beginning, Ku has a strong Patriotic feeling an d national consciousness. When he studies in the western country, romanticism has a great influence on Ku Hungmi ng. At the same time, his teacher upholds monarch, which is similar to Chinese traditional moral and ethic advocatin g monarch’s paramountcy. Many famous people refer to Chinese civilization in their works, for example, Emerson thi nks Confucius is the honor of China and the soul of Chinese traditional culture. They also think highly of Ku Hungm ing, and duo to their influence, Ku Hungming clearly comprehends the concept and relation between Confucianism a nd romanticism, therefore, he has his own thinking and ideology with unique emotion of Chinese culture and the ide a of romanticism.

Ku Hungmin g believes that Chinese Confucian culture is attractive, and it can change western people’s attitud e towards China and embodies the essence of Chinese nation. Therefore, he gets down to translating Lun Yu into English so as to better spread Chinese image and culture.

3.3 Multidimensional Adaptation and Selection in the Translation of Lun Yu

According to the theory of Eco-translatology, the translator will make the choice of adaptive translation strategi es on the basis of adaptation to the ecological environment of translation. This adaptive selection covers multiple di mensions, mainly embodied in the following areas

3.3.1 Linguistic dimension

Chinese belonging to Sino-Tibetan system has a very loose structure while English belnging to Indo European system has a compact structure. At the same time, because Chinese is evolved from pictograms, the character is f

ull of Imagery. Therefore, when Chinese is translated into English, it requires the translator to complete presentation of original language. Ku Hungming’s translation of Lun Yu embodies linguistic dimension.

Example: 《论语·学而》：子曰：“巧言令色，鲜矣仁！”

Ku Hungming translated it into “ With plausible speech and fine manners will seldom be found moral characte r.”

In exclamatory sentences of ancient Chinese, the inversion is often used in order to emphasize the predicate whic h is often advanced. In the text, “鲜矣仁” is an inversion structure, and the normal syntactic order is “仁鲜矣”. “矣”is equivalent to the modern Chinese “啊”, and the exclamation point is added to the end of the sentence to the stress tone of speakers, which has a strong imagery when it is connected with the text. In the transaltion of Ku Hun gming, it begins with the word "with", then uses the passive voice "will be found" to gradually strengthen the tone. A lthough the end of the translation does not use exclamation point, the tone approaches original text without showing weakness. It can be seen that the choice of the language and the structure of target language of the translator dep ends on the understanding of the original text to some extent.

The reason why Ku Hungming can translate Lun Yu so perfect is his profound Chinese knowledge. From the perspective of Eco-translatology, Ku Hungming can better deal with the language positioning.

3.3.2 Cultural Dimension

The adaptation and selection of cultural dimension is that the translator pays attention to the transmission and interpretation of bilingual culture in the process of translation. This translation requires translators to understand the similarities and differences between the source language culture and the target language culture in essence, adapt to the cultural environment of the source language, and avoid the distortion of the source language culture. Ku Hungm ing attaches great importance to the transmission of cultural connotation in the process of translation. Under the bac kground of that ecological environment of Ku’s time, he is eager that the Chinese culture can be recognized by the western world so that we can reestablish the image of the Chinese people. Therefore, Ku Hungming often uses the words of western literary giants such as Wordsworth, Emerson and others to interpret the Confucian thought in the n otes and utilizes the similarities between the Chinese and Western cultures to establish the bridge of communication.

Example: “虽疏食菜羹，必祭，必齐如也。”( 《论语·乡党》)

Kung Hungming translated it into “Although he might have the plainest fare on the table he would always say grace* before he ate．”

Note:* An ancient Custom in China is equivalent in meaning but not exactly the same as t he “saying grace”in Europe.

In this sentence, “祭” is the loaded word of Chinese culture, and it is different from the word “pentecost” in th e standing for admiring Gods by killing oxen and sheep, and “祭” is the symbol of thank to worship the god s by offering some meals when people have a dinner. The cultural connotation of "祭" is not easy for westerners to understand, so Ku Hungming compares it as "saying grace" ( praying before meals). "祭" and "praying before meal s" have some similarities in the cultural level, which means people show their thanks to Gods due to the support of food when eating.

Such translation is the best choice and emphasizes the commonness of Chinese and Western culture, which makes readers easy to accept and understand the real meaning of Chinese culture.

3.3.3 Communicative Dimension

Confucius has many disciples, and many of their names appear in Lun Yu. If their names are translated one by one, it will be difficult for the western readers to accept and memorize, therefore, when Ku translates some unim portant people, he uses “A disciple of Confucius” to replace their real names, which can reduce the time of thinking for Western readers and greatly increase the efficiency of the transmission of Chinese culture to the Western world. Similarly, Ku Hungming uses ellipsis to maintain the success of communication when dealing with certain allusions in the translation.

Example: “《论语·子罕》子曰：“凤鸟不至，河不出图，吾已矣夫！”

Kung Hungming translated it into “Confucius was once heard to exclaim. Ah, woe's me. I do not see any sig ns either in heaven or on earth that we are near the end of the present period of disorder and anarchy and that w e are about to inaugurate a new order of things in the world.”

In the sentence, “凤凰”and“河图” have a strong source of myt h. From the perspective of communication, it is difficult for Western readers to understand the sentence if it is translated literally without modification. Therefore, Ku Hungming chooses to omit directly them, only translating their central meaning by the form of domestication. In this way, the Western readers don't have to try to guess the meaning of the original text, and it is helpful to the rapid a cquisition of Confucius thought.

According to the Eco-translatology, Ku’s translation not only pursuits th e order and balance of nature, but also adapts to the time background and achieve the success of language, culture and communication. It is the successf ul example in the process of translating Chinese traditional classics and spreading Chinese culture.

4 Implications and Limitations of Ku Hungming's English Translation of Lun Yu from the Perspective of Eco-tr anslatology

This paper has analyzed Ku Hungmign’s English Translation of Lun Yu from the Perspective of Eco-translatolo gy, showing the adaptation and s election of Ku Hungming’s translation of Lun Yu such as linguistic dimension, cultur al dimension and communicative dimension. Eco-translatology is a new perspective, and it has both implications and limitations. We will analyze them from the two aspects in this part.

4.1 Implications of Ku Hungming's English Translation of Lun Yu from the Perspective of Eco-translatology

As is narrated above, the Eco-translatology theory is very valuable to study Ku’s translation of Lun Yu. The t heory of adaptation and sele ction provides a new perspective for the study and analysis of Ku Hungming’s translatio n of Lun Yu, Chinese classical literature. Thus, we can deduce that the Eco-translation can be applied into other Ch inese classical literatures and works in a proper way besides Lun Yu. Many of Chinese classical literatures are activ e and energetic, and lots of studies are focused in this field. Ku’s translation from the perspective of Eco-translatlogy is the best reference. At the same time, we know it is not easy for translators to translate classical literatures into English, and everyone should make a correct judgment of their ability before translating some text. The study not on ly testifies the feasibility of Eco-translatology, but also enriches the research of Ku’s translation of Lun Yu, providing learners who study Chinese traditional literature a good chance to review their translation and laying a foundation for the future studies of the translation of Chinese traditional classics effectively.

4.2 Limitations of Ku Hungming's English Translation of Lun Yu from the Perspective of Eco-translatology

Although we try our best to present how Ku Hungming translated Lun Yu successfully according to the theory Eco-translatology in the paper. However, there are still limitations existing in the study.

On the one hand, Eco-translatology is a newer translation theory proposed by Chinese scholar, and though s ome studies relative to Eco-translatology appeared like bamboos shoots after a spring rain, it’s still immature, which means there must be some unavoidable shortcomings compared with those matured studies of other translation theor ies, especially those theories that are proposed earlier by foreign scholars. On the other hand, it needs a long time to make the whole world pay attention to the Eco-translatology theory in terms of Eco-translatology’s young age, and therefore, most of the references of this paper are written by Chinese scholars, and the foreign materials about Eco -translatology is not adequate. Hence, the paper is not comprehensive, and it needs to be further studied in the nea r future.

Conclusion

By analyzing Ku Hungming’s English translation of Lun Yu from the perspective of Eco-translatology, the theor y of Eco-translatology and Ku Hungming if fully interpreted, and at the same time, the purpose and background of K u Hungming’s Lun Yu translation is very clear. What’s more, adaptation of the tr anslational Eco-environment, translat or's adaptation and multidimensional adaptation and selection in the Translation of Lun Yu are the best embodiment of Eco-translatology. Therefore, we can draw a conclusion as follows. With the rapid development of global economy, politics, culture and others, ecology becomes an important concept in every country, and more and more people pa y close attention to it. Ecology is applied into different fields, and Eco-translation is one of them. At the same time, the international status of China in the world is improving, and Chinese classical literatures are popular with the peo ple all over the world, and the translation of Chinese classical literatures become more heated. In this paper, we ha ve summarized Ku Hungming’s Eng lish translation of Lun Yu which is perfect in the late of 19th century from the pe rspective of Eco-translation, and Ku’s translation fully embodies the adaptation and selection of eco-environment, whic h is an example to the study of Chinese traditional culture and classical literatures. However, we have to change ou

r ideas and eyes in the process of translating Chinese classical literatures accordingly due to the difference of times background, which is more helpful to the spread of Chinese culture.