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A Study on the Translation and Dissemination of the Chinese Cultural Classic Mencius in the English-Speaking World

Author(s)

Caiyuan Sun*, Dongxia Zhao

Affiliation(s)

School of Humanities, Shandong Agriculture and Engineering University, Jinan, Shandong, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

Through literature and data collection, this paper studies the translation history, translation strategies, dissemination and acceptance of the Chinese classic Mencius in the English-speaking world. The findings indicate that the translation history of Mencius has progressed from the joint efforts of 19th-century missionaries and sinologists to the diversified contributions of contemporary scholars worldwide. For the translation strategies, at the lexical level, translators increasingly prefer pinyin-plus-annotation (e.g., ren, yi, xin); syntactically, a predominantly literal translation is combined with necessary grammatical supplementation (subjects, conjunctions); stylistically, parallelisms and antitheses are employed to mirror the rhythmic balance of the source text. Dissemination has been carried out through academic writings, journal articles, public lectures & seminars, etc. Readers in English-speaking world generally have a welcome acceptance of English-version Mencius. A close analysis of these aspects is hoped to deepen our understanding of how cultural distance affects the acceptance of Chinese classics and promotes the development of classic translation theories in the global era.

Keywords

Mencius; English-Speaking World; Translation History; Translation Strategies; Dissemination

References

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