A Study On Zhang Peiji’s Selected Modern Chinese Essays In The Light Of Si Xianzhu’s Translation Quality Assessment Model

Zhang Peiji is a renowned educator and translator in China. He has made outstanding achievements in the English translation of modern Chinese essays. Selected Modern Chinese Essays, his representative translation work, opens a window for the westerners to know about modern Chinese literature and Chinese culture and society by introducing a series of classic works of famous writers during the May4th Movement. Once it was published, it won applause and great attention from the public. Therefore, it is of widespread influence and great translation value. Zhu Manhua said,"Selected Modern Chinese Essays, though not a textbook, can be regarded as an excellent textbook because it provides a large number of representative examples for Chinese scholars to further study the translation theories and techniques."(朱曼华,2000:61) As few scholars did relevant researches from the point of Translation Quality Assessment (TQA), the thesis attempts to apply this relatively objective and systematic approach to the translation criticism of Chinese essay translations, wishing to attract more people to conduct similar studies.The overseas TQA studies began in the1970s while the relevant domestic researches are relatively late and not extensive. The fact that the TQA studies are still at the initial period at home has negative impacts on the translation studies. In2004, Si Xianzhu, based on previous researches at home and abroad, constructed a TQA model with a functional linguistics approach. After testing the model with several texts belonging respectively to the informative, expressive and operative types, he discovered some limitations of the model and explored the causes for them. Then he put forward the revised one in2007. But he points out the inadequacy of empirical studies of the revised model and suggests testing it with more sub-categorical linguistic data.Based on this, the thesis attempts, from the perspective of Si Xianzhu’s revised TQA model, to evaluate the three essays from the first volume of Selected Modern Chinese Essays, namely, a narrative essay "The Sight of Father’s Back", a lyric prose "Autumn in Peiping" and an argumentative prose "A Letter to Chiang Ching-Kuo". In accordance with the operational procedures, the thesis begins with the analyses of the field, tenor and mode of the Source Texts (STs). Then it finds and explains the reasons for the deviances of ideational, interpersonal as well as ideational and interpersonal meanings through a down-up analysis. Then, seen from the text level, the negative deviances which bear little influence on the holistic translation quality will be excluded and negative equivalence will be counted through an up-down analysis. In the end, the text type and the weight of deviances of ideational or interpersonal meaning will be determined. After that, the final quality assessment of the three essays is made.The empirical study of the three essays shows that Si’s TQA model is applicable to the evaluation of Chinese-English essay translation. However, some defects in it are also found during the assessing: insufficient parameters for essay translation criticism, irrationality of some of the criticism steps and subjectivity in part of the results. It is hoped that the present study will be of value to the empirical studies of Si’s TQA model and essay translation criticism.