A Tentative Study On Zhang Peiji's Style Translation Of Prose From The Perspective Of Stylistics

Professor Zhang Peiji, a prestigious translator in China, has obtained fruitful achievements both in translation practice and in translation theory. In his fifty years' translation practice, the quality of his Chinese-English prose translation has been widely acclaimed. His translation work Selected Modern Chinese Essays has gained great popularity among scholars and students both at home and abroad. Until now, no monograph on translation of modern Chinese prose can be found and few master thesis focus on this study. Therefore, this thesis aims to make a comprehensive research on Zhang Peiji and his prose translation.In literary translation, style translation is of vital importance. The central core of style translation is to achieve the most appropriate adaptation in the translated style to that of the original by the interpretation of the aesthetic values of the original. Although there is a long history of the discussion on style translation, the status quo remains unsystematic. Approaches generally include the impressionistic and the linguistic approach. The impressionistic approach does give concern to the holistic aesthetic impression of style in translation practice, but it is prone to interpret style by intuitive knowledge rather than the stylistic features to the aesthetic effect. Descriptive-oriented approach pays focal attention to the necessity of applying linguistic methods to the description of the language use. Yet, the linguistic method is applied only for linguistic sake which gives less concern to the aesthetic value or literary effect, thus falling short in style translation. So far as the author is concerned, the remedy of the inadequacies can be sought in stylistic analysis which bridges linguistics and literary criticism. Stylistics regards style as language choices in actual use. With style as well as stylistic effects as the objects of investigation, stylistics lays its emphasis on how the author strives to express thematic meaning and heighten aesthetic effect by linguistic choices. The application of stylistics to style translation can help translators enhance their stylistic awareness and become more sensitive to stylistic significance and then grasp the aesthetic values of language. Therefore, by using the theories of stylistics, the author holds a view that style can be perceived. It is not invisible or elusive, but has its own distinguished features that can be perceived. It is embodied by the translator's techniques such as words choice and sentence making. Since most of the stylistic elements are hidden in the linguistic factors of language, the reproduction of style effect will not be a mere ideal as long as the translator has a good command of English both in theory and practice. Professor Zhang, a translator of high attainments and masterly skill both in Chinese and in English, offers satisfactory translation of modern Chinese prose writings which are acknowledged as classics in translation history. The present thesis, guided by the theory of stylistics, focuses on the issue that how the stylistic elements are properly revealed and how the closest equivalence is achieved in his style translation. What needs to be highlighted is that stylistic analysis is not an omnipotent tool in prose style translation. It has its limitations on account of the nature of style and specific features of prose writings. The limitation is embodied in the loss of some imperceptible elements in translation practice of modern Chinese prose writings. The analysis and transference of these elements should resort to the creativity of the translator.In the view of the above, the author attempts to make a research on Zhang Peiji's style translation in Selected Modern Chinese Essays in the light of stylistics. From the angles of phonetic factor, lexical factor and syntactic factor, the author tries to conduct an analysis on how he successfully reproduces the original stylistic elements in the translated essays. The present thesis breaks a new ground to the study of Zhang Peiji's prose translation. Besides, it proves the feasibility of stylistics during the research. It is hoped that this thesis will guide the future research of prose translation and give some help to a better appreciation of Zhang Peiji's work.Apart from the introduction, the present thesis is composed of four chapters.Chapter One focuses on the introduction to Zhang Peiji's which includes his life story, his achievements, his viewpoints toward translation, his prose translation and his translation principles.In the second chapter, the author gives a brief introduction to style translation from the perspective of stylistics. To be specific, it concerns the introduction of stylistics and style translation respectively, the discussion of style translation in the light of stylistics, style translatability and Liu Miqing's system of stylistic markers.In the third chapter, the author presents a comprehensive analysis of both the advantage and disadvantage of stylistics in prose style translation. The advantage residents in its systematicness which is detailed in the analysis of phonetic factors, lexical factors and syntactic factors. The disadvantage lies in the loss of imperceptible elements in translation practice of modern Chinese prose writings.In Chapter Four, the author conducts the case study on Zhang Peiji's translation practice of Zhu Ziqing's Cong Cong by contrast with Zhang Mengjing's version and Zhu Chunshen's version to justify stylistic approach to style translation. The background exposition of Cong Cong is made to bring out the thematic significance of the analysis. What follows next is the data collection and step-by-step linguistic analysis at phonetic, lexical and syntactic levels. Through the comparison, the author comes to the conclusion that Zhang Peiji's version exceeds the other two versions by presenting the closest equivalence to the original style. As a necessary complement, the loss of the translation of the imperceptible factors is elaborated and evaluated.The last part serves as a conclusion of the whole thesis, which generalizes the whole thesis briefly, summarizes the main viewpoints of the author and points out the contributions as well as the limitations of the study.