A Comparative Study Of Three Chinese Versions Of A Tale Of Two Cities From The Perspective Of Socio-Culture

In 1990, two leading figures of the school of culture within translation studies—Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere—published their co-edited book Translation, History and Culture, in which they publicly announced translation studies had taken a―cultural turn‖. Ever since then, translation studies have shifted from the micro textual-linguistic level to the macro study of socio-cultural background. It marks a major breakthrough in translation studies and considerably expands the research scope of the discipline. By adopting a descriptive and comparative approach and from the perspective of cultural turn, this thesis aims to reveal the substantial impact that socio-cultural factors exert during the translation process.A Tale of Two Cities is one of the masterpieces of Charles Dickens, a well-renowned English novelist in the 19th century. The story encompassed the bulk of history of Great Britain and France during the French Revolution. By depicting the tragic sufferings of a family in the Revolution, it exposed the savagery of the Revolution as well as the outrageous crimes and brutality the nobility had inflicted upon the common people on the eve of the Revolution. Up to the present, there have been altogether dozens of Chinese versions of the novel. This thesis carries out a comparative study of three Chinese versions rendered by three representative translators—Luo Jinan, Song Zhaolin and Sun Fali—at two distinct historical periods. It starts with a general discussion of the relationship between translation and culture. Then it proceeds to probe into the linguistic level of the three Chinese versions: firstly it compares the language style of the three Chinese versions in terms of diction and syntactic structure; then a comparative study is focused on the translation strategies of characters'names, geographical names, culture-loaded words and expressions, and abridgement and full rendering. Finally from a socio-cultural perspective the thesis analyzes the three translators'reasons for choosing A Tale of Two Cities, and the underlying reasons for the differences in language style as well as in translation strategies. The analysis of the three Chinese versions of A Tale of Two Cities demonstrates the fact that the differences in language style and translation strategies are mainly attributed to the distinct social and cultural backgrounds in which these translated texts are produced.Through a comparative study of the three Chinese versions of A Tale of Two Cities from a socio-cultural perspective, this thesis aims not to correct the mistakes in the translations, nor to judge which version is superior, but to probe into the underlying reasons responsible for the differences in the three translations. This thesis contends that literary translation criticism should not be confined to the textual-linguistic level, but should examine the profound socio-cultural background. It is expected that more literary translation critics can study from the socio-cultural perspective in order to attract translators'attention to the importance of socio-cultural background, which will be conducive to improving the quality of translated texts and promoting the development of literary translation.