A Study Of The Translation And Reception Of Feng Tang's Stray Birds From The Perspective Of Communication Studies

In the translation field,it is not surprising that newly translated versions of previously well known works will arouse criticism and discussion among common readers and professional translators.This is particularly true for the retranslation of literary classics.Despite this,there has rarely been a case like Feng Tang's translation of Rabindranath Tagore's Stray Birds.Published in July 2015,the retranslation of Stray Birds by the Chinese novelist Feng Tang,sparked fierce controversy from the time it was published,principally because of the racy language and contentious imagery used in it.Severely criticized,Feng Tang's translation was recalled from both brick-and-mortar and online bookstores in December the same year,on the ostensible grounds that it veered too far from the original text.Though superficially,therefore,the reason leading to the translation being a communication failure appears to be the translator's misinterpretation of essential elements of Tagore's original work,underlying its failure are many other factors.In an attempt to examine the various factors contributing to the decision to remove the work from public distribution,this thesis,on the theoretical basis of Lasswell's 5W Model of Communication,looks at all stages of the communication process and puts forward a model particularly for explaining the communication process of translation.The proposed model is applied to the particular case of Feng Tang's translation of Stray Birds for drawing on the various components that are involved in its communication.Using this proposed model as an analytical tool,this thesis analyzes the transmission process of Feng Tang's translation from author to reader and identifies the in-text and extra-text factors accounting for its failure.Lasswell's 5W Model of Communication is a classic model borrowed from communication studies,consisting of five inquiries into Who,Says What,In Which Channel,To Whom and With What Effect.Feng Tang's translation of Stray Birds is investigated and assessed in a comprehensive way.By comparing the original text and the translation,together with a study of the translator's postscript,the translation brief given to Feng Tang,and the feedback received from readers,the thesis identifies three principal factors that led to the ultimate public rejection of the new translation.Firstly,the translator had deviated from the original text by presenting the translation in his personal style;secondly,the publisher had not taken sufficiently seriously the role of being the "gate keeper" to filter out the incorrect,inadequate or improper content;and lastly,influenced and limited by their "previous experience" of the original work and the translator,readers failed to evaluate the new version sufficiently objectively.The thesis thus arrives at a conclusion that the translator,the publisher,and the target readers,all have had a role to play in the final communication failure.