A Tentative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of David Copperfield

Translation criticism has arisen ever since there was translation practice. It is an essential link between translation theory and practice. Compared with the increasingly developing translation theory and practice, however, translation criticism remains a virgin field that needs ploughing. This thesis attempts to compare the two Chinese versions of Charles Dickens?novel David Copperfield translated by Dong Qiusi and Zhang Guruo respectively from three aspects -?Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance. This thesis contains five chapters: The Introduction briefly touches upon the original, its author, the translators and their translations. Chapter One expounds the relationship between translation theory, translation practice and translation criticism. With regard to the criteria of translation criticism, based on the trinity theory put forth by Yan Fu, the~?involve three aspects faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, which will be discussed in the subsequent three chapters. Chapter Two is concerned with whether and how the versions are faithful to the content of the original. In order to produce an adequate translation, words, phrases, sentences and even the text are to be understood in particular contexts, especially in conveying the associative meanings of the original. Faithfulness, however, has its limitations in rendering the text from English to Chinese, especially those characteristics which are intrinsic to the source language (SL), such as humor, dialect, allusion, tense-shift, etc. Chapter Three discusses whether the versions are expressive in the target language (TL). The fact that the original is idiomatic in English requires that the translation be idiomatic in Chinese, both in diction and syntactic structure. Chapter Four deals with elegance, which is defined, in this thesis, as faithful rendition of the original style in the TL. The author discusses the terms of literary style, translating style and translatability of style. The renditions of individualized speech and figures of speech are taken as typical examples to show how the two translators reproduced the original style. Chapter Five makes a general comment on the two translations, including their translating backgrounds and the translators?styles. A report of the questionnaire involved in the composition of this thesis is also given to show readers?responses to the two Chinese versions. Finally, the content of this study is summarized in the Concluding Remarks. It is pointed out that there has never been any perfect translation, but that perfect translation remains a goal for all translators.