Abstract:

The English translation of Wen Fu commenced in the 1940s. Insofar, there have been 8 important English translations. Based on the criteria of “seeking knowledge with truth, determining theme with kindness, and writing with aesthetic feeling” in transknowletology, this paper conducts a comparative study of the two full English translations by Shih-hsiang Chen and Achilles Fang, both of whom are Chinese diasporic translators in the United States, on the four levels of vocabulary, syntax, rhetoric, and discourse, in order to explore the realization of the three aspects of “seeking knowledge with truth, determining theme with kindness, and writing with aesthetic feeling”. The paper reveals that Shih-hsiang Chen aims to spread his concept of Lyricism of Chinese literature to western countries, and influenced by his thought of “poetic translation”, his version mostly adopts domestication strategy, which generally realizes “seeking knowledge with truth, determining theme with kindness, and writing with aesthetic feeling”. Achilles Fang aims to spread the original knowledge of literary theory in Wei-Jin period to the American literary circle, and influenced by his thought of faithful translation, his version mostly adopts foreignization strategy, which mainly reflects the pursuit of “seeking true knowledge” of literary theory in the original text, but it is slightly less satisfactory than Shih-hsiang Chen’s version in “determining theme with kindness” and “writing with aesthetic feeling”. Both translations have made considerable contributions to the global reconstruction of the discourse of ancient Chinese literary criticism.

Key words: Wen Fu, Chinese diasporic translators, transknowletology, domestication and foreignization, seeking knowledge with truth, determining theme with kindness, and writing with aesthetic feeling