A Study On Zhang Ailing's Translation Of The Golden Cangue

Eileen Chang(1920-1995) occupies an important position in modern Chinese literary history, with her unique artistic enchantment appealing to all and profound understanding and insight of human nature. Meanwhile, she was a bilingual writer who skillfully used Chinese and English to write and translate, and won a great reputation in both of China and western countries. However, the research about Eileen Chang has developed in an unbalanced way in domestic academic circles. On one hand, Eileen Chang's translation is a new topic. In particular, Eileen Chang's previous study is limited in literary field; on the other hand, her literary achievements are discussed much more than her translation contributions both in literary and translation field. The study on Eileen Chang's translation is always in a vacuum state, it is lack of systematic organization and essential aspect of her translation. So the thesis makes a analysis on her self-translation novel The Golden Cangue.Eileen Chang's representative work---The Golden Cangue, is acclaimed to be "the greatest novelette in the history of Chinese literature" and "one of the most beautiful work harvested in literary circle", has aroused great interest of readers and scholars. Commissioned by C.T.Hsia, Eileen Chang translated it into English,which is included in Twentieth-century Chinese Stories published in 1971.On the macro level, the thesis stays focus on domestication and foreignization. Foreignization and domestication are two important strategies in dealing with culture gap when translating culture-loaded texts. Foreignization advocates that culture factors in the original should be reserved in translation. While domestication advocates the culture factors or culture-loaded words and expressions in the original should be translated into words and expressions familiar to target readers, so as to cater to their taste and demand and make it much easier for them to accept the translation. There is a heated debate between these two strategies in translation field. The focus of the debate is that how to deal with the cultural differences between the source language and the target language. At the same time, the thesis also uses the Skopos theory to explain Eileen Chang's translation strategyOn the micro level, the thesis carries out a descriptive analysis of linguistic and cultural aspects in the translation. Linguistic aspect deals with lexis, syntax and sound speech. Cultural aspect deals with images and some culture-specific vocabularies, such as allusions and idioms. The thesis emphatically analyzes the image of the sun which is neglected by people.Proceeding from those issues, the thesis leads to the conclusion that Eileen Chang mainly adopted foreignization strategy in her process of translation while adopting domestication strategy subsidiary. On one hand, Zhang adopted domestication strategy and used fluent English expression in order to make the target language readers to get information as same as the source language readers. On the other hand, Zhang mainly adopted foreignization strategy, this made the translation remain a lot of Chinese cultural features and maintain the charm of Chinese words. Her purpose in doing so is to make the target language readers understand Chinese cultures, language features and the writing style of herself.