An Analysis of the Style of Three English Versions of Moral Classics

Translation strategy can influence translation style.Through the contrastive analysis of three English versions of Moral Classics,this paper concludes that James Legge's translation,with its more poetic linguistic characteristics,surpasses Arthur Waley's translation and that of David Hinton in conveying the style of the source text.But the three versions suffer from the loss of rhetoric and fail to convey the exact style of the original.So,translators must improve their cultural appreciation and their Chinese and English competence to reduce the loss of style in translating Moral Classics.