A Study Of Hu Shi As A Translator

Hu Shi(1891-1962), as the banner man of May Fourth Movement, contributed greatly to the building of new Chinese literature. The part his translation activities played in his probing into new literature could not be ignored.This thesis takes Hu Shi as a case study, trying to give a thorough description of his literary view, his translation activities and his literary creation around the May Fourth Movement, especially of the great impact his literary translation exerted on his creation of new poetry and modern drama, attempting to follow the trace of his probing into the new literature as a translator.The thesis contains six parts. The first part is an introduction which includes the literature review of the research, the purpose and significance of this study.The second part gives an account of Hu Shi's life experience and his literary view. His life and educational experience promoted the formation and development of his literary view. He held that the social function of literature was to educate people. With the slogan of "audacious hypothesis and careful test", his enormous desire to create new literature pressed him to experiment with various ways of literary innovation. In his entire life, he devoted himself to the promotion of the use of live written language-vernacular Chinese and realistic literature in China. He believed the reform of Chinese literature should begin with learning new concepts, new writing techniques, and new literary genres from our western counterparts.The third part concentrates on his translation activities, including his translation purposes, his translation views and his choice of the original. In general, he had two purposes of translation: one was to save the nation as many literates did at that social juncture, the other was to renovate Chinese literature. He pointed out he endeavored to provide models for literary creation in Chinese, hoping writers then in China could follow suit in their literary creation so as to destroy the tradition in which literature was the privilege of only the upper class. As a result, literature in China could carry out its function as educating and improving the makings ofcommon people, thus the ultimate goal-using literature to save the nation could be achieved. The translation criterion he adopted was a combination of faithfulness and expressiveness. He thought highly of the cultural effect of translation. His choice of the realistic subject matters, the vernacular style of the original and new literary genres was the result of his pursuit of two standards in measuring new literature: vernacular language and realistic subject matters. This chapter concludes that Hu Shi's view of literary revolution threaded through his translation activities.The fourth part probes into the influence his translation exerted on his creation of new poetry by comparing two successful new poems with their originals. With regard to new poetry, the author of this thesis selects three influential new vernacular poem translations which were claimed by Hu Shi as most successful in ChangsM Ji-his first anthology of new poetry, and compares the translations with the original texts to display the influence his translation exerted on his new poetry creation mainly from two aspects: rhythm and tangibility of poems. The influence of his creation on translation is seen largely in style and in the changing process of his writing language at the different stages of his translation activities. This chapter comes to a conclusion that Hu Shi's translation and creation of new poetry were inseparable and interactive with each other. Hu Shi's translation of foreign poems accelerated the birth of new Chinese poetry.The fifth part clarifies how his translation of drama influenced his modern drama creation by a comparative study of his translation A Doll's House and his only drama creation The Greatest Event in Life from four respects: plot, techniques of drama writing, characterization and theme to find out the similarities between them to account for the impact of his translat...