An Organic Study On The English Translation Of Lao She's Novels Within The Framework Of An Extended Hermeneutic Motion

The present study researches into the English translation of Lao She's novels from 1940s to 1990s from a hermeneutic and historical perspective. An extended version of George Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion is applied in the historical study to explore into why and how Lao She, the great Chinese writer, with his novels had been introduced and translated into the English-speaking world and how the writer and his novels were received by the target readers. Specifically, the study aims to find out the distortion and adaptation the western publishers and translators had done to Lao She's novels before the intra-textual and extra-textual balance was basically restored in the later translational activities. The study is carried out in both descriptive and prescriptive paradigm -- it makes explicit judgment of the English translation of Lao She's novels and points out the ultimate goal for future translational activities in addition to mere historical description. In the study, Lao She's eight completed novels plus an unfinished one are taken as a whole, as a source text in a broad sense and the English translation history of his novels is considered as a prolonged translation process—a prolonged Hermeneutic Motion.The dissertation is structured in accordance with the four stages of Hermeneutic Motion and it consists of two major parts. The first major part comprises the statement of the aim, researching methods and prospective contributions of the study, a literature review of the previous studies, and theoretical preliminaries for the present study. George Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion is presented and analyzed before an extended version of the theory is provided. The extended version of Hermeneutic Motion plays as the theoretical apparatus of the study as well as the basis for the layout of the whole dissertation. In Theoretical Preliminaries, the spectrum between ideal trust and utilitarian trust and the steps of aggression are specified while the cause and effect of translational incorporation and the implications of restitution are researched into.The second major part is the study on the English translation of Lao She's novels within the framework of the extended Hermeneutic Motion. It firstly deals with the issue of text selection which is intimately related to trust stage. Text selection is contextualized historically and culturally to include all the major parameters concerning trust stage of Hermeneutic Motion. It aims to find out regularities of text selection and the reasons behind. Secondly, it explores into aggression stage, that is, understanding and interpreting the source text in specific translation processes, to see how the source text was manipulated in terms of content and the underlying causes. Then there comes the incorporation stage. It solves the problems that how a target text comes into being under the literary norms and the translation tradition of the target culture and what are the literary features of a target text as both a translated work and a component of the target literary repertoire. There follows a transitional section as both a summary of the last three stages and an introduction to the next one. It is pointed out that imbalance of the English translation of Lao She's novels was caused in any of the first three stages of Hermeneutic Motion and the symptoms of the imbalance. Last but not least, restitution stage is discussed in detail. It refers to the efforts of the translators and publishers from both source-language and target-language society to restore the intra-textual and extra-textual balance of Lao She's novels and the equilibrium between the source text and the target text, between source culture and target culture.Concerning the first three stages of Hermeneutic Motion, two translated novels are centered on: one is Rickshaw Boy (1945), the first English translation of Luotuo Xiangzi(《骆驼祥子》); the other is City of Cats (1964), the first English translation of Mao Cheng Ji (《猫城记》) since before 1970s, only these two novels were chosen and translated by the western publishers (translators) and had achieved extensive influence. Researches on restitution stage include the English translations of Li Hun (《离婚》), Niu Tian Ci Zhuan (《牛天赐传》), Si Shi Tong Tang(《四世同堂》) and Gu Shu Yi Ren(《鼓书艺人》) that were initiated by Lao She in 1950s with the help of his American friends like Pearl. S. Buck. Restitution also refers to the efforts made by the western publishers after the end of 1970s, publishers of Hong Kong from 1970s to 1997 and of China's mainland in 1980s and 1990s in translating Er Ma(《二马》), Zheng Hong Qi Xia (《正红旗下》) and other novels. To discern the historical continuum, special attention is paid to those works that were retranslated. It is concluded that English translation of Lao She's novels, after having been through utilitarian trust, biased aggression and adaptive incorporation of the western publishers and translators before 1970s and the untimely restitution efforts made by Lao She in the early 1950s, is steered toward equilibrium - the ultimate goal of translating and introducing Chinese writers into the western world.In the last part, Conclusion, a brief summary of the study is made, suggestions for relevant future studies are given, and the particular significance of applying Hermeneutic Motion, being both descriptive and prescriptive, to the historical study of the English translation of a certain writer's works is reconfirmed.