Transplantation Of Chinese Original Ecology Culture In The English Translation Of Kunqu Opera The Palace Of Eternal Youth

Chinese original ecology culture refers to the part of culture that is rooted in China and keeps its original essence during a long process of evolution. As one of the oldest genres of Chinese opera, Kunqu opera originated in the end of Yuan Dynasty more than 600 years ago. Harmoniously integrating elite culture and folk culture, Kunqu opera embodies rich legacies of Chinese original ecology culture, which is excellently reflected by The Palace of Eternal Youth, one of the masterpieces of Kunqu opera produced in the golden age in its development history. The elite culture in The Palace of Eternal Youth is demonstrated in traditional Chinese philosophy like Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, as well as refined literary script; while folk culture in The Palace of Eternal Youth consists of plain feeling and life of common people, folk custom and legend, as well as vulgar joke and banter.Under the background of globalization, it is very important to introduce Kunqu opera like The Palace of Eternal Youth to the world, especially English world. It is one of the means to achieve the goal by transplanting Chinese culture through translation. The term"transplantation"is applied in the field of translation studies with the metaphorical meaning of transmitting as effectively and completely as possible the genuine culture hidden in the original text into target language culture for readers to receive and understand. Based on the translation theory of"seed transplanting"proposed by Susan Bassnett, this thesis divides the results of transplantation into three groups: successful transplantation, partly successful transplantation and unsuccessful transplantation.This thesis focuses on two English versions of The Palace of Eternal Youth: one is translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, the other by Xu Yuanchong and Xu Ming. Through a contrastive study between the original text and the two English translations, the thesis tries to examine to what extend Chinese original ecology culture is transplanted into target language culture. Examples are given to illustrate in detail the successful transplantation. Through analysis, this thesis finds that the transplantation of Chinese philosophy in elite culture and plain feeling and life in folk culture is quite successful; the transplantation of refined libretto in elite culture and custom and legend in folk culture is partly successful; while the transplantation of allusion in elite culture and joke and banter in folk culture is mostly unsuccessful.In a time of globalization, it is the responsibility of a translator to promote Chinese culture to the world. The author of this thesis conducts the research on the transplantation of Chinese original ecology culture in translation to explore how Chinese original ecology culture is transplanted in the target language text, with the hope of offering some constructive reference for translating Chinese classical works into English and for better introducing and spreading Chinese culture into the world.