A Brief Analysis of the English Translation of the Fuzzy Expression in Lunyu Based on Gu Hongming’s Translation Version

Abstract

With the quick and deep development of globalization, cultural communication is deepening and covering various aspects. How to translate classical Chinese works not only comprehensively and precisely, but also easy for people who without cultural background to understand is becoming a heated problem. The affluent and high-valued minds in Lunyu almost ranks to the top among ancient Chinese works, and language in it is concise, advocating using a few words to express propounding thought. Therefore, fuzziness becomes one of its typical characteristics, however, the related research about translation strategies, reasons why translating in that way, and effects on it are lacking. This paper will under the direction of theories of fuzzy language and cultural context, picking representative instances mainly from Gu Hongming’s translation version to make a brief analysis. It comes out that main translation strategies are noting, paraphrasing, expounding, and omitting. Plus, reasons resulting in fuzziness will be illustrated, such as original characteristics of language itself，writing style, different culture backgrounds and so on. Moreover, it owns both benefits and drawbacks, such as providing more possibilities for translators to translate in the way which they believe is the best but there still have so much disputation among different versions. The aim of this thesis is through the deliberate statement, giving a little enlightenment towards other Chinese traditional works’ translation, especially fuzziness’s translation.