E-C Translation Of Lin Yutang's The Importance Of Living Light Of Language Character Theory

Lin Yutang was a significant and prolific writer and translator in Chinese literary history.This thesis aims at conducting a detailed analysis of the E-C translation of The Importance ofLiving based on the translation by Yue Yi employing the Language Character Theory proposed by GaoJian.Chen Hongwei said that it was true that translation was a cross-linguistic, cross-cultural,cross-social communication. And if the possibility of translation was based on the cultural generalities,the limitations of it would lie in cultural particularities (Chen Hongwei, 1998:11).Gao Jian finds that quite a lot of Lin Yutang's early essays have two versions with the same theme,an English version and a Chinese one. His English works are written in native English and Chineseworks in native Chinese. Both display quite different characteristics and special flavor. Obviously, it isthe language characters that affect the way we write or translate. (Gao Jian, 2006:173) The author of thethesis will compare the original with Lin's translated version in order to find how the languagecharacters works in Lin Yutang's own translation practice and what we can get from it.In The Importance of Living, Lin Yutang imparts and inherits Chinese culture successfully bymingling writing and translating. And the translation of The Importance of Living into Chinese is notcross-culture but cross-linguistic, that is to say, although the source text and target text are two differentlinguistic versions, both them share the same Chinese culture background. Therefore, theEnglish-Chinese translation of this book has the mission of restoring the true colors of the originalEnglish version, and involves the process of back-translation, which can best reproduce the originalChinese culture in Chinese language completely and effectively.According to Gao Jian's language character theory and by analyzing specific examples taken fromthe English original and the Chinese version translated by Yue Yi, this thesis argues that the translatorsuccessfully back-translated the translation of Chinese classical ancient poems and Chinese philosophyin the Chinese version of Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living for Chinese readers who are familiarwith Chinese culture except something that is not so satisfactory.The thesis will begin with the reason for choosing such a topic; analyze the current researches onLin Yutang and The Importance of Living home and abroad in chapter two. In chapter three thetheoretical framework of the thesis will be introduced. And chapter four presents the features of Lin Yutang and The Importance of Living. Based on the previous analysis, back-translation will be analyzedwith specific examples from The Importance of Living and the E-C translated version by Yue Yi, andalso some shortcomings from the translation will be analyzed according to the Language CharacterTheory in chapter five. In the last part, conclusion is made and limitations of this thesis on the E-Ctranslation of The Importance of Living are presented. Through the analysis and study, the author arrivesat the conclusion that in the practice of translating The Importance of Living, the translator should bearin mind those language characteristics,target-language-centered approach should been encouraged,thatis,the translator should have a thorough comprehension of the language characters of both the sourcelanguage and target language before he finds the best compatible or fusional point, and then conveys allfrom the source into the target language,perfect either in content, form, or style.