| Since the meaningful impact of a word is context-dependent, this study investigates the cultural and semantic contexts of William Faulkner's short stories in both English and Chinese to determine whether the original is successfully "echoed." As controversial as Walter Benjamin's theory on translation is, "echoing" the original refocuses a literary translation on the overall effect rather than isolated wording. Despite its questionable practicality, it serves as the basic criterion in this study, which evaluates the quality of a translation through comparing the effect of the original with that of the translated in paralinguistic aspects such as voice, style, and dialect.;Faulkner readers vary considerably in their explanations of what contributes to the power of his prose, but few fail to notice the haunting effect the paralinguistic elements exert in his fictional world. While Chinese has comparable varieties of narrative voices and linguistic styles, the "eye dialects" are nearly impossible in Chinese translation on the principle of "linguistic fidelity" because (i) the separation of characters from their pronunciation renders the written system incapable of transcribing accents, and (ii) Chinese dialects are divided by region, not along racial lines. Chinese has no "dialectal equivalence" to "black speech" in English.;The eighteen stories in xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ("Selected Stories of Faulkner") are discussed in three groups--stories with child narrators, informal adult narrators, and formal adult narrators--respectively in chapters 3, 4, and 5. Chapter 2 deals with critical issues concerning the definition of voice, style, and the use of dialect in Chinese translation. In order to illustrate with specific examples the successful and failed aspects of a translation, only five stories are chosen for detailed analysis. The analysis consists of a detailed reading of the original and a comparative study of the translated.;Without rejecting the notion of "linguistic fidelity" entirely, this dissertation acknowledges that voice, style, and "eye dialect" are unable to exist outside syntax, but proves that the context-oriented approach to translation is a feasible alternative because the connotative nuances created by paralinguistic elements cannot be fully recaptured in another language by simply being "faithful" to the words and syntax in the original. |
