A Study Of Yu Guangzhong’s Retranslation Of The Old Man And The Sea—from The Perspective Of Translation Context

Retranslation is a common phenomenon in translation, especially in the translationof literary classics. It is mainly composed of intermediate translation, back translation,multi-translations by various translators, and retranslation of the same literary work bythe same translator. This thesis is concerned with the last type.The meaning of a literary work is multi-dimensional, while a translated version ismerely a production in a particular historical period. As the years go on, differenttranslator has different understanding of the same work, which leads to multipletranslations. Even the same translator may have some new understandings of the worktranslated by him/her before. Through retranslation, those different understandings areable to be reflected. Up to now, the research on retranslation mainly concentrates on thethird type—multi-translations by different translators, few on the last type. Based ontwo translated versions of The Old Man and the Sea made by Yu Guangzhong in1957and in2010, the author chooses seventy-five examples as the object of the study. Toachieve a deep analysis, this thesis has made a descriptive and comparative study onlexical, syntactic and textual level under the guidance of Yu’s theoretical thoughts ontranslation, with an attempt to probe into the underlying reasons and factors thatinfluence the translator in different periods from the perspective of translation context.Yu Guangzhong not only does well in Chinese literature, but is good at Westernliterature as well. When it comes to poems, essays, literature translation as well astranslation criticism, he has achieved great accomplishments and made tremendouscontributions. His literary poetics and unique thoughts on translation, to a large extent,have influenced the retranslation of The Old Man and the Sea. Besides, as a master oflanguage, poetry and prose writer and scholar, Yu Guangzhong takes strict and seriousattitude towards translation. In1980s, under the influence of cultural turn in translationstudies, more and more scholars shift their research perspective to the external elementssuch as social, economic and political factors, laying less and less emphasis on theinternal features of the text itself. By a study of Yu Guangzhong’s retranslation of TheOld Man and the Sea, the thesis turns out that those ignoring elements, including the language itself, the style of ST and the understanding of ST, are the crucial motivationthat drives Yu Guangzhong to retranslate.