A Study On AAVE-Chinese Translation: Translation Ethics And Metonymy

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) was regarded as "bad" language due to its non-standardness at the phonetic and grammatical levels. With the rising social status of African Americans, however, it is getting more and more attention of scholars which is long overdue. Currently, the research into AAVE is mainly focused on the description of the non-standardness at the phonetic and grammatical levels, the exploration of its origin or the examination of the relationship between AAVE and the social status of the African Americans. In contrast, the artistic use of AAVE in the literary works has received little attention. Research on AAVE from the perspective of translation studies, though some achievements have been made, is still unsystematic, somewhat narrow and shallow. Using the descriptive translation study (DTS) as its theoretical framework and borrowing theories from related fields, the dissertation aims to make a comprehensive and systematic study on the translation of AAVE into Chinese and come up with a few guiding principles for best rendering AAVE into Chinese.First of all, the dissertation makes a comprehensive investigation into the origin, the linguistic features, aesthetic effects and functions of AAVE in literary works. The origin of AAVE is closely related to the history of slavery trade. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, millions of Africans were forced to leave their homeland and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to work as slaves on the American continent, where they experienced all kinds of sufferings physically and spiritually. In order to live and communicate, they had to learn English. However, the kind of English they learned was not standard English but a variety of English in which some African elements in pronunciation, grammar, lexicon and figures of speech were preserved. This non-standard form of English was also a weapon used by the African Americans in their struggle against the white.As the "other" of the standard English, African American Vernacular English is often employed to achieve specific effects and perform different functions in literary works. Its major artistic features include conciseness, implicitness and rhythmic beauty and its major functions include character delineation, cultural transmission, emotional evocation and expression of ethnic identity and political consciousness. Through the comparison of the literary works by the white writers and the black writers, it is clear that the former put emphasis on the non-standardness of AAVE at phonetic and grammatical levels while the latter pay more attention to the transmission of linguistic features and cultural signature concepts. AAVE as is found in literary works is a remolded form of what is spoken in everyday life, and as such is a direct reflection of the writer's political and ethical attitude toward the African Americans.Based on the systematic analysis of linguistic features of AAVE, its artistic effects and functions in literary works, the dissertation situates the translating methods in the receptive social-cultural contexts, giving a synchronic and diachronic study on the AAVE-Chinese translation and explores translation ethics and metonymy in AAVE-Chinese translation. On the basis of the study, translation principles and translating methods are proposed.The diachronic study of AAVE-Chinese translation shows that the translation is influenced by the social and cultural contexts. Regarding the translation of AAVE, four different translating methods, namely pseudo-ancient Chinese, Chinese colloquialisms, equivalent Chinese dialect and malapropisms, have been adopted at different times. While the choice of each method is largely determined by the ideology and poetics prevalent at the time, the translator's personal ideology and poetics can hardly be ignored.From the ethical perspective, translation, as one of the important means for cross-cultural communication, is a direct reflection of the translator's attitudes. AAVE is the indicator of the social status and is often regarded as the "other". In AAVE-Chinese translation, the choice of the translator is the reflection of the translator's ethical attitudes. While inappropriate choice of translating methods does not necessarily imply that the translator is prejudiced against the African Americans, the fact is that some translators'excessive use of Chinese impolite expressions can and does give the readers a distorted impression of the African Americans. Therefore, in the translation, form and content are both important. While the patron, the ideology, the readers are factors that have an important bearing on AAVE-Chinese translation and should be taken into consideration, the role played by the language users can not be ignored either. That is, AAVE-Chinese translation is a process in which all elements and all the involved subjects are interrelated to one another.In terms of language, the translating methods of Chinese colloquialisms and Chinese dialect are both domestication while the use of malapropisms is foreignization. However, they are both foreignization in terms of cultural transmission. As one of the advocates of foreignizing translation, the American post-colonial scholar Lawrence Venuti puts forward the solution of using linguistic remainders such as dialects, jargon, archaisms, etc. to break the target conventions of the standard English and bring about great changes in the dominant culture and society. Our analysis of the Chinese translation of AAVE shows that the use of dialects can not necessarily achieve the objective of foreignization and may even have the unintended effect of misrepresenting the speakers of AAVE in the target language. So, domestication and foreignization in translation is not the dualistic antagonism in fact, they are complementary to each other.As translating AAVE into Chinese is a complicated undertaking in which many factors are at work, none of the translating methods can be expected to completely reproduce all the aspects of the source text. Moreover, in addition to being interlingual translation from English to Chinese, translating AAVE into Chinese also involves first of all intralingual translation from non-standard to standard English, which increases the possibility of "misreading" and "misinterpretation". Therefore, the translation of AAVE is metonymic.Based on the above analysis, the thesis puts forward the following three principles regarding AAVE-Chinese translation:the principle of foreignization, the principle of reproducing the aesthetic effects of AAVE, the principle of harmony. In this era of globalization, the purpose of the translation is not the selfish "nationalism" or the cultural hegemony. All the nations should respect each other in order for peaceful progress. So foreignization should be adopted as the chief strategy in AAVE-Chinese translation in that it can better retain the cultural core of the African Americans and is therefore more conducive to the mutual understanding between different cultures. At linguistic level, the translator should adopt different methods to reproduce the rhythmic beauty, conciseness and implictness in AAVE. However, in this process, the choice of translating methods should be appropriate with the spirit of the whole text taken into consideration, hence the principle of the harmony. Under the guidance of these three principles, four translating methods are put forward:dialect blending, malapropisms, Chinese colloquialisms, and notes.