A Stduy Of Lin Yutang's Translation Thoughts With Reference To His English Version Of Six Chapters Of A Floating Life

Lin Yutang (1895-1976) serves as an interpreter of Chinese culture by writing and translating about China. He endeavors to apply his cultural insights to his C-E translation practice, committed to accelerating the international literary circle's communication with China. Lin Yutang summarizes the"Three Standards"for a qualified translation:"faithfulness","smoothness", and"beauty"with"spiritual resemblance"as their core, and advocates"sentence-for-sentence translation". His contributions to China's translation theory system are permanent and his translation art is also well worth our careful study. His English version of Six Chapters of A Floating Life is a masterpiece which reflects his literary orientation, cultural attitude, aesthetic taste and fully demonstrates his extraordinary translation expertise.The thesis consists of four chapters besides the introduction and the conclusion. The introduction provides a literature review of the existing studies of Lin Yutang, defines the scope of the present study and states its significance and methodology. The first chapter conducts a survey of Lin's translation thoughts with the emphasis on his most systematic treatise on translation theory"On Translation". The second chapter gives an account of Lin's life experience, and discusses his cultural attitude and literary orientation. The third chapter introduces the Chinese classical novel Six Chapters of A Floating Life and analyzes the motivations for Lin's choice of translating it. The last chapter, the central part of the thesis, is devoted to a detailed analysis of Lin's English version of the novel from four perspectives by quoting abundant examples. Then comes the conclusion of the thesis. By outlining the bases and major points of Lin's translation thoughts and making an analysis of his life and his English version of Six Chapters of A Floating Life, the thesis shows how Lin's cultural background and literary orientation have affected his formulation of translation thoughts, his source-text selection and his choice of concrete translation strategies.