On Reproducing Literary Style Of Tess Of The D'urbervilles Into Chinese

Style has been thoroughly studied at home and abroad from various angles through varied approaches. As far as translating is concerned, style reproduction is an issue no translator can afford to neglect in order to work out a translation faithful in content, form and spirit. Style transference is considered the supreme criterion in literary translation and the desired state of translation. The spirit and life of a literary work as style is, the first and foremost concern of a translator is to convey the original style. However, style has been defined in widely different ways. Some think that style is form; some view it as the linguistic features that communicate emotions and thoughts. In this paper, style is defined as an organic integration of form and content, revealing an individual writer's writing characteristics. This thesis is dedicated to discuss how to faithfully represent the original style in a translated work through comparison of concrete examples selected from three independent Chinese versions of Tess of the D 'Urbervilles in the perspective of functional equivalent theory which gives priority to readers' responses.Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a classic work of Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet was produced between 1888 and 1891. It relates a tragic story of a poor innocent peasant girl, Tess D'Urberfield, who undergoes a lot of hardships in her brief life. This book does not simply document the heroine's experiences; instead the story is composed to criticize the bourgeoisie hypocrisy in morals and religion signified respectively by Angel Clare and Alec D'Urberville. Upon its publication, Tess of the D 'Urbervilles had aroused tremendous attention amid criticism as well as praises. Introduction of it to Chinese readers started as early as 1936 when Zhang Guruo and Yan Enchun published their respective translation versions. Since then many translators have dedicated themselves to the translation, re-translation and adaptation of this novel time and time again, offering Chinese readers a host of choices to know and understand foreign cultures. Wu Di's version, for example, went public in 1991 and Sun Fali's in 1993. There are also dozens of other translators' works came out in different times and were widely accepted and analyzed. At the same time, multitudinous translation versions with different characteristics confront translation theorists, translators and the public with the issue of style reproduction in literary translating.The first chapter is designed to discuss the issue of style reproduction in translating, studying different views concerned including that of Eugene A. Nida in his main contribution of functional equivalent theory. It puts forward that in translation a translator should spare no effort to fully transplant the original style putting an eye on the response equivalence between the original readers and the targeted ones. Chapter Two gives a brief review of the novel under discussion, its author, Thomas Hardy's writing career, and his writing style. Stylistic analysis of the fiction is also conducted to make preparations for the following comparative study. Chapter Three and Chapter Four are given to comparative analysis and study of three Chinese versions of Tess of the D 'Urbervilles in the light of functional equivalence theory from the depiction of environment and characterization respectively. Style, invisible yet perceivable through words, shall be seriously addressed in order to render the original correctly and accurately both in content and form, not confining to formal equivalent only, so that targeted readers can feel exactly the way original ones do. In the conclusion, the thesis points out that despite its subtlety style shall be and can be faithfully reproduced in the receptor language through natural and idiomatic Chinese expressions most suitable to the style and also acceptable to average Chinese readers.