Abstract

As part of Chinese literature, ancient Chinese works have a long history in China and bear thousands of years' quintessence of culture heritage throughout feudal society. The English translation of ancient Chinese is one important way to spread classical Chinese culture to the west. Its translation becomes an important sector in Chinese learning and transmission. At the same time, its translation also plays a significant role in cross-culture communication. These works’ translating attracts many experts’ and scholars' attention. As a special sector, how to highlight function words’ classical charm when translated into English becomes a particularly important problem. Taking On Teachers for example, this paper will give a specific study on interpretation of “ZHI”.

Key Words: ancient Chinese, English translation, function word, ZHI

摘 要

文言文作品作为中国文学的一个组成部分，有着悠久的历史和丰厚的文化积淀，蕴含了几千年的封建社会文化精髓。其英译是中国古典文学向西方传播的一条主要途径，直接关系着中学西传的命运，同时也肩负着做好跨文化交际的使命，一直以来受到国内外翻译家、教育家、外语研究者（汉学研究者）等众多专家学者们的重视。虚词作为古代汉语中的特殊词汇，其英译如何彰显古文的魅力，至少在如何正确翻译出它的词义及作用方面显得尤为重要。本文主要以《师说》中虚词“之”的用法为例，阐述文言文虚词的种类及用法。

关键词：文言文；英译；虚词；之

1.    Introduction
   Function words have no actual meanings in Chinese; some ancient function words are equivalents of the modern function words, which don’t have complete meanings of vocabulary, but they have grammatical meanings and functional significance of sentences. Function words alone can not make a sentence, and they can only be used together with the content words to make up the grammatical structure. These kinds of words fall into six categories, which are prepositions, conjunctions, particles, interjections, adverbs and onomatopoeias. (Wang 10) Function words play an important role in uniting sentences. As an old saying goes that: “a minimal error or deviation may result in wide divergence”. Because of the differences between the usages of functions, some united sentences’ meanings will hack away. The skillful use of function words can make whole sentences enriched and outstanding.
In ancient Chinese works, the function word "ZHI" can be used as a pronoun, an auxiliary or a conjunction. (He 596) First of all, when it is used as a pronoun, there are two cases, personal pronouns and demonstratives. Second, when it is used as a particle, it can be divided into two parts, structural particle and affix particle. Last, it can be used as conjunctions, which are coordinate conjunctions and coherent connectives.