On The Relationship Between Wang Meng's Translation Of John Cheever's Cure And His "Seasons" Series Writing: Acceptance And Innovation

Wang Meng is a master of the contemporary Chinese literature. Wang Meng has been praised John Cheever, an American novelist, for all times and he has translated Cheever's short story Cure in 1990. After that, his"seasons"series such as Season of Love (《恋爱的季节》), Season of Nervousness (《失态的季节》), Seasonof Hesitation (《踌躇的季节》) and Season of Carnival (《狂欢的季节》) werepublished. They were called the soul of a contemporary Chinese intellectual history—that is a suffering process of trauma, deformity, repair and rebirth. Mr. Wang is thus honored"a mirror of the People's Republic of China"and"a banner of contemporary Chinese literature that cannot be brought down". The relationship between his translation and his literary writing of"seasons"series is worth studying. Acceptance and innovation in this thesis often occurred in three levels: theme of the novel, characterization and narrative discourse. The original text and Wang Meng's version as well as his writing are to be analyzed and discussed and the cultural roots would be opened out. The thesis first discusses the variation of the theme of novel in the source text and Wang's version. Due to Wang Meng's being affected by the distinctive social background and cultural factors in China, he omitted parts of the original text, thus changing the theme of novel. Second, the characters are drawn from real life; however, the reasons mentioned cause different personalities, living conditions and performing ways. Thus, innovation of characters is also brought into discussion in this thesis because character is one of the most important components of a novel. Then we find out that the translator has adopted the strategy of foreignization to translate, resulting in the loss of the original cultural images. Such variations bring some unexpected disadvantages, for example, some readers of this kind of translated works cannot easily understand what they are reading. Finally, a comparative literature researching on the translating level is used in discussing the language style of humor and irony in both source text and Wang Meng's version. This thesis aims to find the relationship between Wang Meng's translation of Cheever's Cure and his literary writing of the"seasons"series with the principles of comparative literature on a cultural level, and to analyze the causes for acceptance and innovation in three aspects: theme of the novel, characterization and the narrative discourse. Based on the above discussion, the thesis concludes that acceptance and innovation in Wang Meng's literary writing are inevitable result of the impact of his translation because of the distinctive social background, social factors and the poetics in China.This thesis aims at making the following contributions: first, we hope to observe the relationship of Wang Meng's translation and his literary writing and the distinctive social background, social factors and the poetics in China. Second, we hope that it will be an enrichment of the textualization of comparative literature. Third, we hope that it will continue to promote the development of comparative literature.