A Study On George Kao's Translation

George Kao, also known as Gao Keyi, is a renowned writer and translator in the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He was influenced by Chinese and Western cultures since his childhood and had a good understanding of both Chinese and American languages and cultures. He published his first long translated masterpiece《大亨小传》in 1971, then《长夜漫漫路迢迢》in 1973 and《天使,望故乡》in 1985. For all the time, scholars in areas of literature and translation think highly of his translated works, on which, nevertheless, not many studies have been conducted in the mainland.This thesis will make a study on the three translated works of George Kao. Based on a specific analyze from the aspects of language and culture, the translation style of George Kao will be discussed. Based on the previous research findings that his works are characterized with the old-fashioned language style, namely, a mixture between classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese, his translation style was summarized as follows: first, in morphology, Mr. Gao skillfully applied the four-character idioms in his translation; second, Mr. Gao did not stick to the grammar of the original article, instead, he represented the content of the original in his translation according to the Chinese grammar or pragmatic uses; third, as for images in the original, Mr. Gao chose different methods in translating them, depending on whether they could be translated in a Chinese manner. Some images proper to the original culture would be translated literally with explanations in the translated works, or they would be replaced by images in the culture of the target readers. Though researchers in translation circle give Mr. Gao's translated works a relatively high evaluation, his translated works still have some limitations and flaws, which has not been referred to in the previous researches. For example, Mr. Gao chose literal translation when faced with puns and literary quotations in the source text, which would inevitably lead to the loss of the rich meaning of the puns and the cultural connotation of the literary quotations, the target readers'incomplete comprehension of the foreign culture, as well as a reduced representation of the literary thought of the original. In this thesis, the translation thoughts of Mr. Gao, which can only be discovered from some of his speeches and articles, will be discussed from the four aspects of translation's nature, methods and process as well as how to choose the source text.This thesis will discuss Mr. Gao's achievements and conduct an in-depth and thorough study on his translation style and theories, which would be worthy and meaningful, since few people have done a monographic study on him.