doi: 10.18178/IJLLL.2024.10.4.539
A Study on the Translation Revision of The She King Retranslated by James Legge—Taking the English Translation of Ode as the Analysis Center
Peishan Li
- Interpreting and Translation, Foreign Language School, Southwest Jiaotong University, China
- Manuscript received March 21, 2024
- revised April 19, 2024
- accepted May 6, 2024
- published July 19, 2024
Abstract
James Legge, a famous British sinologist in the 19th century, translated <em>The She King</em> three times in nine years, and he translated <em>The She King</em> into English for the first time, making great contributions to the English translation of Chinese classics. The three versions of <em>The She King</em> present different characteristics, so this study selects the 40 poems in Legge’s 1871 prose version, the 1876 rhymed version of The Odes in <em>The She Kin</em>g, and the 38 poems in the 1879 selected translations on religious themes as the main objects of study, analyzes the translation modifications at the macro and micro levels in the retranslation of <em>The She King</em> to further explore the Legge’s translation. The reasons for Legge’s retranslation of <em>The She King</em> mainly in terms of changes in identity, adjustments in one's own religious thoughts and poetic cognition, and the care for readers. This kind of revisions and retranslations facilitated the wide dissemination and process of classics.
Keywords
- The She King</em> or <em>The Book of Poetry</em>
- <em>The Odes</em>; retranslation
- translation revision
How to Cite
Peishan Li, "A Study on the Translation Revision of The She King Retranslated by James Legge—Taking the English Translation of Ode as the Analysis Center," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 343-346, 2024. https://doi.org/10.18178/IJLLL.2024.10.4.539
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2024 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).