| As one of China's most prolific modern writers, Lao She enjoys great prestige both at home and aboard. His language is notable for its conciseness and liveliness, which comes from his skillful employment of the local dialect of Beijing. In the history of modern Chinese literature, few writers can stand the test of time. However, Lao She is one whose significance and value have been increasing with time goes on. The translation of Lao She's works has seen three summits worldwide from the 1 940s. It started from the USA and soon swept across Europe and Japan. In 1 945, his masterpiece Luotuo Xiangzi ( iT ), translated under the title of Rickshaw Boy by Evan King, was published in New York. The novel became an American best seller and the fate of Xiangzi caused deep concern from the readers of another country. Followed were the English versions of his other famous novels. In 1974, another version of Luotuo Xiangzi was published with the title of Rickshaw by Hawaii University Press. Domestically, Camel Xiangzi, a version by Shi Xiaoqing came out in 1981. Now, within nearly sixties years, most of Lao She's works have been rendered by various translators at home and abroad into numerous languages. Translation has helped Lao She's works to sweep into more countries and enjoy the enduring fame. No doubt, translation has played an important role in winning the writer world recognition. The studies on the translation of Lao She's works, however, seem rather frail compared with the studies devoted to the writer himself and his works and the translating activities of his works. As the present paper notices, there are some but insufficient researches on the translated versions of Lao She's works so far collected. To promote the research in this field, the present thesis chose two English versions of one of his representative novels, Luotuo Xiangzi ( ) for a comparative study. They are Shi Xiaoqing's Camel Xiangzi and Evan King's Rickshaw Boy. There should be a certain theoretical foundation and methodological requirement in the comparison to track it on a more scientific road. In addition, the translation from Chinese to English involves an essential problem, i.e., how to preserve the original cultural features as much as possible without appearing ranslationese?to fulfill the object of cross-cultural communication. It is found that this problem is often connected with the issue of functional equivalence. Therefore, the paper will start with the introduction of the functional equivalence proposed by Eugene A. Nida, which will be taken as a basis for the comparison of the two English Versions that will be made in the following chapters. This survey is highly instructive, through which it is possible to gain some insights into the nature of translation. Following the theoretical investigation is an overview on the writer, the novel and its two English versions. The above two parts make respectively Chapter One and Chapter Two. Chapter Three is the illustrative analysis of the two versions chosen in linguistic aspects. It consists of three parts: lexical meaning, syntactic meaning and stylistic research. Concentration is put at the stylistic research, where different methods and techniques to reproduce the unique source style are analyzed. However, language, as a carrier of culture, is inseparable from it when...
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