A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi From The Perspective Of Functionalism

Lao She, regarded as "people's artist", is one of the outstanding writers in China's modern literature in the 20th century. His masterpiece, Luotuo Xiangzi was translated into abounding languages including Japanese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish and so on. However, these versions were translated basing on the first English version by Evan King in 1945 who translated the title into Rickshaw Boy. This version was surprisingly popular not only by American scholars but also common people at that time. Then Lao She was regarded as the most renowned Chinese writer in America.However, Evan King's version was criticized by some scholars in China even by Lao She himself because Evan King had changed the original text greatly, besides mistranslating various cultural things or cultural events; he even added some characters and altered the end of the novel. Though he adapted the novel considerably, this version is basically faithful to the original one.In 1981, a Chinese translator named Shi Xiaojing published her English version of Luotuo Xiangzi---Camel Xiangzi through Foreign Language Press in Beijing. Due to different cultural backgrounds of the two translators and at different historical stages, there are countless differences in these two versions, such as the style, the narrative mode, and even the end of the story. As a Chinese, Shi Xiaojing made full use of her culture and knowledge to translate the novel. Nevertheless, she focused too much on the intelligibility for the English readers so several cultural factors are unavoidably lost in the book.The present thesis is going to compare the two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi from the perspective of functionalism. The writer will choose and compare several examples which can reflect the differences in translation strategies and skopos between Evan King and Shi Xiaojing. And the writer will also analyze and evaluate the effects of translation according to functionalism. Through the comparative studying on these two versions, the writer tries to prove that functionalism actually has a great practical value. Thus in the later translation, functionalism can be considered as a guidance and flexible translation strategies can be adopted to attain better translation effect.The present thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction part, including research background, the aim of the research and framework of the thesis. It tries to sketch a general picture of the thesis for its readers. Chapter two studies skopos theory in functionalism with focus on background theories of functionalist approaches, three rules and function plus loyalty and so on. This chapter serves as the theoretical framework of the thesis. Chapter three gives a brief introduction to Luotuo Xiangzi in Chinese, its two English versions and different translation strategies applied in these two versions. In chapter four, efforts are exclusively put on the detailed analysis of the two versions in the following ways --- comparing and analyzing the expressions related to ecological culture, material culture, social culture, and some proverbs, slangs, idioms and so on. Finally, a conclusion will be drawn in chapter five:the comparative study of two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi adequately exemplifies skopos theory in functionalism.From the analysis, it can be found out that the translation which complies with the skopos theory of functionalism will be quite exact and marvelous. While the translation which violates the rules in the skopos theory of functionalism will either twist the original meaning of the text or even makes the readers perplexing. Therefore, from the analysis we can conclude that the skopos theory of functionalism is practical in the process of translating.