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

Luotuo Xiangzi, the masterpiece of Lao She’s, was a story about the tragedy ofan old Beijing rickshaw puller called Xiangzi. This book has been translated intomany languages, which has been considered as not only the essence of its kind inChinese literature, but also an impact to the world. Over the past years, respectiveresearches about Lao She and his works have been performed, while less attentionhas been received in the analysis of the perspective of foreignization. The previousresearches are mainly done from the perspectives of discourse structures, functionalequivalence, Skopos or relevance theory, etc. Therefore, the author intends toperform a comparative study of the two English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi, whichwas respectively translated by Shi Xiaoqing as Camel Xiangzi, and Jean M. James asRichshaw.The author performs a comparative study of these two English versions, inorder to figure out if any preference to foreignization or domestication when thetranslators translate this novel, to analyze how foreignization is applied to solve thecultural differences in two versions and its advantages in literary works, and whattechniques are used to keep the traits of Chinese culture, etc. This research isbasically an analytical study and based on the guidance of Lawrence Venuti’sforeignization theory.56examples are taken out from the original and tworenderings for the detailed comparison. Those cultural elements would be classifiedinto ecological, material, social, religious and linguistics categories, according toNida’s classifications of five cultural elements. Through the specific analysis, we canexamine what strategies the translators apply to reproduce the style andcharacteristic in target languages and how to preserve those of the original to themaximum extent, when they face with those typical of Chinese cultural-loaded words, idioms, customs and dialects, and so on.The research findings are:1) Foreignizing strategy has been primarily appliedin both versions and domestication is laid in the subordinate place. Besides, some ofsupporting methods are used to maintain the original traits.2) By using theforeignizing strategy, the characteristic of the source language can be preserved tothe maximum in the target language, as well as cultural differences. The selection ofstrategy is also subject to the translator’s subjective views.3) From the examplestaken, foreignization is more preferable to preserve the Chinese traditional images interms of translating the literary works. And it is helpful to popularize the originalstyle throughout the western countries, as well as to reflect the cultural differencesbetween the east and the west.