The New Interpretation Of Zhou Shoujan’s Translation

Among the field of civil literature in Shanghai in the Republic of China,Zhou shoujuan was the representive one among those writers. As a writer, translator and an editor, he produced a large number of works which had great impact on and contributs a lot to the popular literature in that period. Especially from his translation works, we can grasp the early featues of 20 th century in the translation area and acquaint his great fore sight that leaded the fashion of literature from his works choice, tanslation strategies and translation ideaolodgy. His translation works revealed the researchors a colorful complex section of the mordernity history of literature and presented the development trace of literature from traditon to modernity.The studies should be surveyed under the background of that period in order to reach an objective conclusion. By the theory of translation as adaptation and selection, almost all the factors that have influentce on his translation would be considered. On the aspect of his works’ choice, most of his early translation novels were the masses-oritated taste, such as love stories, moral novels, patriotic stories, detective and anedote novels. Moreover, he introduced and translated the novels from the small and weak nations, which showed his great insight into the translation field. At the same time, he introducede some foreign movies by adapting them into novels. Following the footprint of the May 4th writers, Zhou shoujuan translated not only a large number of novels of Guy de Maupassant, Henri Barbusse, Anton Chekhov and the works from weak nations but also dramas of Ibsen and Andreyev.Zhou shoujuan used different strategies in the two stages. In the early stage, he mainly adopted domenstication with foreignization as adjunct: in language, he translated his works with easy classical Chinese, adapted the name and text of those noves to Chinese culture, ethnics and religion and used omniscient point of view to narrate stories,which made him like a tranditonal chinese storyteller. As for methods, he used amplification, omission, adaptation and annotation. On the contrary, he emploied foreignization as the main mehtods with domestication as adjuct: he used vernacular to translate stories by imputting new words and Europe language organizaiton.In Cultural dimensions Zhou shoujuan reproduced the source language culture by the use of outside compensation and hard translation method. For communicative dimensions, with multidimensional perspective he achieved the original writer’s purpose of communicating with the readers. In drama translation, Zhou Shoujuan could adjust his translation according to the characteristics of the drama. Compared with Pan Jiaxun’s translation, his text seemed to be more refined in language, close to life, full of rhythem, and could reflect the characters’ action and personalities. At this period culture was dominated by the introduction of foreign culture, reflected in the salutation and religious culture. Under the principle of foreignization, he adopted the metnods of literal translation, literal translation with annotation and transliteration and the translation method with annotation.Zhou shoujuan ’s translation thought was the result of adaptation to the different ages. In the early stage, influenced by the era context, literature style in Jiangnan area and his personal experience, the theme of his translation works focused on love, such as, love of men and women, ethics of love and patriotism.His language was elegant and fine, embodied in the pricise refining of the sentence structure, the elegance of his aesthetic taste elegant, the melancholy of aesthetic tone; In the late period, translator conformed to the trend of The times, showed humane care, paid more attention to the plight of ordinary citizens, translated a number of humanitarian writer’s works. In these work, he introduced Tolstoy ’s fraternity thought, Mr. Andreyev’s Anti-war thoughts, Gorky’s humanitarian ideology of the proletariat, Barbusse, Maupassant and Chekhov’s humanitarian thought; As far as langugage concerned, he attached more importance to loyal to the original text, and strived to convey the spirit of the original woks at this time.Zhou Shoujuan made great contributions to the translation field in the early days of ROC and the May 4th period. His translation had the logo of "modernity", and embodied in the language, genre, theme and strategies, etc.He also made the novel translation, editing and publishing standard enter into a new milestone. As a translator, he played a connecting link between the first generation of traditional literary translator(represented by liang qichao& Lin shu) and the second generation of modern literary translator(May 4th translator represented by Luxun,Zhou zuoren and Hushi).As the pioneer of literary translation, Zhou shoujuan created a new situation of the Chinese modern translation literature, and was an influential translator in the early 20 th century.