On Lin Yutang's Cultural Attitudes As Reflected In His Translation Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji

Lin Yutang is a famous literary translator in China. The couplet "two feet covering both eastern and western cultures; one heart tasting articles in the world" has always been a vivid description of his translating practices. This thesis is aimed to explore Lin's cultural attitudes and attempt to prove that they did exert a strong influence on his selection of source texts and the specific translation strategies he used, with Fu Sheng Liu Ji as an example.The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One—the introduction states the significance, objectives and methodology of this study. Chapter Two makes a historical review of some translation theories after the "cultural turn" in translation studies and previous researches on Lin Yutang and his translation of Fu Sheng Liu Ji. It also examines Lin's translation theory which is based on linguistics and psychology and is a breakthrough in Chinese history of translation. Chapter Three discusses Lin's cultural attitudes by comparing him and his contemporaries and analyzing the influence of both Chinese and western cultures on his childhood, student life and religious belief. His views of Chinese and western cultures and the perspective of cultural harmony had a great influence on his selection of Fu Sheng Liu Ji as the source text. Chapter Four tries to prove the close relationship between Lin's cultural attitudes and his translation strategies from the perspectives of transforming linguistic structure and translating cultural-loaded words. His three criteria of translation—"fidelity, smoothness and aesthetic beauty" are found to have been well implemented in this work. Chapter Five is the Conclusion.