Chinese Classical Novels In Russia:Translation And Research (Before Ming And Qing Dynasties)

The value of existence of literature works not only lies in its particular artistry and aesthetic nature,but also in its social cognition function.As an important part of spiritual culture of a country ora nation,literature works on the one hand can truly reproduce the social life and material culture at specific historical period,and on the other hand can reflect the rich spiritual culture of the country or nation,especially for the novels.The Russian translation of Chinese literature works,including the Chinese classical novels,opens a window for the Russian readers to know the Chinese society and traditional culture.From V.P.Vasiliev to V.M.Alekscycv and then to the younger generation of sinologists,they follow the fine tradition of Russian sinology,continuously broaden the research fields,explain and illustrate the Chinese classical novels from many perspectives and play a role that cannot be ignored in promoting China and Russia to change from the cultural divide at the first place to the communication interaction at present.The thesis aims at analyzing the Russian sinologists' art of translation and research characteristics for the Chinese classical novels and exploring the history and law of spreading the Chinese classical novels in Russia.With the Russian translation of the novels before Ming and Qing Dynasties and their Russian research literature as the basic literature,the thesis refers to the domestic related research achievements,applies the research methods and theories,namely academic history,Medio-Translatology,the science of cultural translation,Translation Communication and so on,and systematically combs and objectively reviewsthe translation and research condition of Chinese classical novels in Russia on the basis of reading a large number of texts.The thesis includes five parts,such as introduction,five chapters of the main body,conclusion,appendix and bibliography.The introduction part makes a comment and analyzes the questions mainly focusing on the origin and meaning of the selected topic,the research history and current situation both as home and abroad,the research object and main content,the research methods and innovations of the thesis and so on.The main body part is divided intofive chapters and the former four chapterssuccessively make a detailed review on the translation,dissemination and research condition of ancient mythology,the novels of the Han and Wei and six dynasties,fantastic romance-stories in the early Tang period and Song Yuan script for story-telling and notes in Russia.The reason why the chapters are divided like this is according to the development track and the stage characteristics of the style of Chinese classical novels and the research characteristics of Russiansinologists.Chapter Five is the analyzing part of the translation.The former four chapters spread out with two lines of “translation” and “study”.The part of “translation” conducts a careful analysis and detailed explanation on all the areas about translation activities,such as the translator,translation,translation background,reader reception and so onof the works of corresponding style,in the light of the form of the translation and the publication time,and strives to comb the complete Russiantranslation history of Chinese classical novels.The part of “study”firstly introduces the research condition of corresponding novel style of the sinologists at different periods longitudinally,explores the stage characteristics of particular novel style in Russia,and then focuses on the special introduction to the common concerns of sinologists and a lateral contrast is made with the research achievements of Chinese scholars and highlights the special research perspective and methods of Russian sinologists.From ancient mythology to Song notes,Russian sinologists can always understand and illustrate the Chinese classical literature works from different angles,for example,S.M.Georgievskij putting forward the Chinese mythological view,B.Riftin taking the mythology study as the origin of folk literature and novels,K.L.Golygina explaining the definition of “mythic fiction”,L.D.Pozdneeva and the other sinologists arguing the Tang legend of “Oriental Renaissance”,A.Zhelokhovtsev interpreting the “citizen novels”,B.Riftin studying on the “folk book”,I.A.Alimov revealing the Chinese traditional fox spitits in the notes of Song people and so on,all of which manifest the profound Chinese literature accomplishment and uniquecultural research perspective of Russian sinologists.With the four Russian translations of Tang legend “Biography of Yingying” as the research objects,with the “translators' responsibilities” and the “trust in readers”these two rules of Medio-Translatology as the evaluation standard and with “taking Chinese culture to the globe” as the starting point and theme and combining with the lacuna theory of the science of cultural translation,the last chapter of the thesis makes a comparative analysis on the Russian translation of culture lacuna phenomena of“Biography of Yingying”,namely historical chronology,geographic names,post titles,social etiquette and custom,historical allusions,myths and legends and so on,which possesses profound historical cultural connotations,discusses the different translation strategy aiming at theses cultural factors adopted by the different translators,observes the situations,such as the retention,compensation,loss,distortion and so on of the origin cultural information whenthe translators deal with all the above cultural lacuna phenomena,and judge pros and cons of all the translations according to that.Through the comparisons,we findthat the translation of Yu.K.Shuchtski gives priority to the literal translation,there are many phenomena of pretermissions and errors and the translation is too rough.L.D.Pozdneeva,J.A.Fishman and A.G.Storozhuk these three translators havetheir own merits when they deal with the cultural lacuna phenomena,although they all adopt the method of literal translation and annotation outside text.The key features of the translation of L.D.Pozdneeva areconcise language and more close to the originalclassical style of writing,but there are some deficiencies in transferring the original cultural information due to the fuzziness and generality of the translation.The main targets of the translation of J.A.Fishmanare“translating account” and "paraphrased",and meanwhile he takes the acceptance ability of the readers into full consideration and frequently makes some retention on transferring the original cultural images.The translation of A.G.Storozhuk can often skillfully transfer the strange cultural images into the familiar cultural images of people and at the same time he completely reserves the deep cultural information of the original text.Therefore,in contrast,the translation of A.G.Storozhuk is one upon the others in dealing with the cultural lacuna phenomena and transferring the cultural information.Through the translation analysis,we come to the conclusion that the translation of cultural lacuna phenomena should comply with the translation strategy with foreignization as the core and domestication as the supplement,but in the meantime we should choose suitable translation methodsaccording to the specific language environment and context and grasp the “degree” of“domestication” and “foreignization”.The Russian sinologists' translation and study on the Chinese classical novels not only helps the Chinese classical novels spreading widely in Russia,but also is taken as a jade from other mountain,and also provides research methods and perspectives for reference for studying on the related areas in our country.