A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Biancheng From The Perspective Of Intertextuality

The term “intertextuality”, which was introduced by French literary critics JuliaKristeva in the1960s, refers to the relationship between texts. And it has been in thespotlight of the academic world since its debut. Kristeva claims that every text isconstructed as a mosaic of quotations; every text is the absorption and transportation ofother texts. The theory of intertextuality not only brings about great social, cultural andhistorical significance, but also stimulates a new thought and a refreshing researchperspective for the evolution of translation theory.Biancheng, a novella that expresses the localism, is the masterpiece of the famousmodern Chinese writer Shen Congwen. The story happened in a border town namedChadong of Xiangxi in the1930s, and it depicts the special local flavor of Xiangxidistrict. At the same time, the novel showcases the kindness of the humanity and thepurity of the soul by describing the tragic story of a girl called Cuicui. The novel hasattracted lots of readers at home and abroad for its unique artistic charm and vivid localflavor.The thesis deals with the two representative English versions of Biancheng, one isfrom the famous British translator Gladys Yang, the other is from the Americansinologist Jeffrey C. Kinkley. The author engages in the exploration of how to apply thetheory of intertextuality to the translation of novels from theory and practice and tries todig up a new perspective concerning the translation studies of Biancheng as an effort toprove the fact that the theory of intertextuality can not only be viewed as epistemologybut also be taken as methodology for the research of novel translation.All in all, two research methods are included in this thesis. First and foremost, thecombination of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis runs through the wholethesis in order to reflect the frequency distribution for use of domestication andforeignization; in addition, the thesis mainly uses the case analysis, especially in themain body part. It expounds the enlightenment the theory of intertextuality brings to thenovel translation by comparing different translations of the different Chinese culture-specific items (CSI) in terms of linguistic, material, social, religious andecological culture. The features of the application of the intertextuality into thetranslation studies are as follows: it pays much more attention to the translator’ssubjectivity and manifests the nature of translation activities as intertextuality in aclearer way. Thus, it helps to build the new intertextual connections between the sourcetext and the target text and provide fresh new theoretical support for the macroscopicconstruction of the translation studies.This thesis can be divided into six parts.In the Introduction, the author displays a brief introduction of the researchbackground, research significance, the methodology, and the structure of the thesisrespectively.Chapter One is the review of the previous studies on Biancheng and its Englishtranslations both at home and abroad.Chapter Two is primarily concerned with the establishment and development of thetheory of intertextuality, and then the relationship between the theory of intertextualityand translation will be presented.Chapter Three is about Biancheng and its two English translations. It not onlypresents a brief introduction of Shen Congwen, but also elaborates the description of thetwo translators---Gladys Yang and Jeffrey C. Kinkley. Meanwhile, it provides us withthe background information about the formation process of these two English versions.Chapter Four is the main body of the thesis. The author initiates the comparativestudy of the two English versions of Biancheng by detailed analysis of five differenttypes of culture-specific items, namely linguistic, material, social, religious andecological culture,The last part is the Conclusion. The author holds that Biancheng contains a lot ofdifferent types of intertextual signals of Chinese culture-specific items which can betraced in other previous texts. At the same time, because of the different environmentand cultural background, the two translators share different understandings on theintertextual signals of those culture-specific items, resulting in the two translators’ different choices of different translation strategies. Gladys Yang’s version involves bothdomestication and foreignization, and foreignization occupies a larger percentage. Asthis version got published in1981, the readers from the English speaking countriescould grasp the style and content of the translated version in a rather difficult way;while Kinkley’s version was out in2009, and he tended to use more foreignization thanthat of Gladys Yang, which helped to meet the needs of those foreign readers who notonly possessed basic knowledge of China and Chinese culture, but also yearned forhaving a better understanding of Chinese culture. In addition, Kinkley’s versionsuccessfully maintained the local flavor of the source text, helps transmit Chineseculture to the world, and making it a worthwhile material for further study.