As a classic work containing profound cultural connotations and philosophical ideas, the English translation of Guiguzi not only involves language conversion but also involves the transmission of cultural, historical, and social backgrounds. This study adopts the translator behavior criticism theory as the core theoretical support, combined with text analysis and social context analysis, to analyze the vocabulary selection, sentence structure, paragraph arrangement, cultural understanding, and translation strategies of the four translations. At the same time, by comparing quantitative indicators such as language accuracy, sentence fluency and cultural misunderstanding rate, the differences in translator behavior during the translation process and their impact on the quality of the translation are intuitively revealed. The study finds that Wu Hui’s translation performs well in terms of language accuracy, sentence fluency and cultural misunderstanding rate, reaching excellent levels of 96%, 4.7 points and 3.3%, respectively. This fully proves that Wu Hui not only has a profound language foundation in the translation process but also can accurately understand the semantics and cultural connotations of the original text and accurately convey them to the target language readers. Wu Hui’s translation has not only had a wide impact in the academic community but also won more attention and recognition for Chinese rhetoric in the international academic community, demonstrating its significant academic contribution and far-reaching influence. In comparison, other translations have certain shortcomings in translation quality and academic contribution, but they still contribute to the English translation and dissemination of Guiguzi.

Zhiguo Feng, Yongping Xiao, Yuzhen Tong. A Critical Study on the Translator’s Behavior in the English Translation of Guiguzi. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2025), Vol. 8, Issue 2: 150-159. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2025.080221.

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