On Lin Shaohua’s Literary Translation In The Perspective Of Traditional Chinese Translation Theories

Lin Shaohua, a famous translator, writer and scholar in China, has translated90Japanese literary works and published7books on academic research or prose writing. The serial novels of Haruki Murakami translated by him have attracted much attention in Mainland China, and have given rise to a heated discussion on his translation. Unfortunately, the research on Lin’s translation is still in early stage and there exists a huge gap between Japanese and Chinese scholars. Actually, his identity as a writer and scholar help lay a foundation for his translation, which has been ignored by most researchers. Therefore, considering his triple identities, we shall conduct a systematic study on Lin’s translation from the perspective of traditional Chinese translation theories, which will contribute a lot to the study on Lin’s translation.Apart from the part of introduction, Conclusion and Appendix, the dissertation consists of seven chapters as the body.The Introduction part is mainly about the literature review, research value, research approaches and methodology of this dissertation. Firstly, the reason why traditional Chinese translation theories should be inherited has been analyzed and thus discussed the feasibility of studying Lin’s translation from the perspective of traditional Chinese translation theories. Then the significance of study on Lin’s translation has been stated. Finally, the main contents, research methodology, framework and some other aspects of this dissertation has been introduced as well.In Chapter one, the detailed discussion and summary of traditional Chinese translation theories has been conducted. We summarize studies on this topic both home and abroad so as to define what the traditional Chinese translation theory is. Then, based on relations between national mode of thinking, language and Chinese characters, we discuss how the language reflects mode of thinking, how characters are formed based on language and how mode of thinking is presented by characters. According to this theoretical basis, the mode of thinking contained in "Liu Shu" can be taken as the national mode of thinking, which can also be applied to translation. Finally, on the basis of thinking modes embodied in "Liu Shu" word-formation, we transplant national mode of thinking (pictographic thinking, ideographic thinking and pictophonetic thinking) into discussion of traditional translation theories. And we conclude the traditional theories as a systematic framework, that is, sincerity to translation career, faithfulness to original text, expressiveness reached by similarity, translation in a proper way and equivalent style, pursuit of traditional Chinese writing style.Chapter Two is about Lin’s identity both as a translator and a writer. We discuss about Lin’s viewpoints on translation and literature and stress his stylistic views on translation and writing, so as to find out the correlations of translation and writing, viewpoints on translation and literature. Then it is clearly stated that Lin’s viewpoints on translation and literature are integrated to his translating and writing. His established viewpoints on literature and writing influence his viewpoints on translation and translating, in the meanwhile the translating practice enriches his literature writing.Chapter three is about truthfulness in traditional Chinese translation theories, in which we will probe into whether Lin has been faithful to translation. This chapter will comprehensively overview Lin’s background knowledge (such as bilingual ability, bicultural knowledge and encyclopedic knowledge), selection of target text, refinement of his translation and recognition from others. We can conclude that Lin’s translation is truthful to the original text.In Chapter Four, the point of view explored is being faithful to original text and expressiveness reached by similarity in traditional Chinese translation theories. The main task in this chapter is to compare Lin’s translated title of books and texts with others’so as to analyze whether Lin’s translation has transmitted the essence in original text accurately. It is stated that Mr. Lin’s translation enriches images in book titles and faithfully expresses the original meanings by using idioms and flexible sentence patterns.Chapter Five is based on standpoint of translating in a proper way and equivalent style in traditional Chinese translation theories. We summarize purposes of Lin’s translations in two aspects, one of which is to apply classic Chinese to enrich and purify modern Chinese, and the other is to realize the style of original texts. These will be analyzed mainly from three aspects:sentence length, four-character structures and reduplicated words. The three features have been found both in his writing and translation and prove Mr. Lin’s writings exert a great impact on his translation. The sentence length and other aspects in his translation correspond to the original texts and expresses the features of simplicity, rhyme and heterogeneity. We can conclude that the style of Lin’s translation is equivalent to his writings and original texts.In Chapter Six, comments on Lin’s translations will be presented. At first, all these comments will be listed chronologically together with a detailed discussion from both home and abroad, literal translation and free translation. We come to the conclusion that Lin’s translation is a kind of faithful translation that both meaning and style are maintained based on quantitative analysis.For Chapter Seven, errors in Lin’s translation will be discussed. We will make an analysis on errors that have been pointed out by scholars Sun Junyue, Xie Jianmei and Shi Xiaowei publicly, and comments on these errors from those scholars and Lin himself. Combining both traditional Chinese and western translation theories, we draw the conclusion that Lin’s errors in these translations cannot belittle virtues.Then the last part is the conclusion. A summary and the conclusion will be presented in this chapter, with shortcomings and points for further studies. It is analyzed that Mr. Lin has inherited and put traditional Chinese translation theories into practice. First, he treats his translation career sincerely. For translation practice, he focuses on different mode of thinking accordingly, which makes translated text transmit what’s in original text correctly by trying his best to keep equivalent form but not identical contents. His choice of words and building of sentences is natural and expressive, and accords with Chinese readers’ taste, which makes it reflecting "Three Beauties" raised by Lu Xun:meaning, sound and form or style. Lastly, we discuss the importance of overall reflecting traditional translation theories, translators and their literary translations. The future study on this topic has been proposed.In the Appendix, six important documents have been filed for reference in the research. The first one is bibliographic list of Lin’s translations in different publishing houses and different years. Then is the article published in Japan written by Sun Junyue. The following is the interview script about Lin’s ideas on literature, translation, errors in translation and construction of translation studies. The fourth part is valuable for they are manual scripts during Lin’s literature translation. The last but one is the summary of four-character structures and reduplicated words in Lin’s writings and translations. The last one is the correcting script from Shanghai Translation Publishing House.