A Comparison Of Four Translation Versions Of David Copperfield From The Cultural Perspective

There has never been a consensus on the criteria of translation in literary translation criticism. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, there was a "cultural turn" in Translation Studies, which has greatly widened the theoretical scope of this discipline. Due to the influence of this "cultural turn", literary translation criticism has shifted its focus to the cultural factors that influence the translation process.This thesis is a case study of four Chinese translations of David Copperfield from the cultural perspective, which are Lin Shu's version published in 1914, Dong Qiusi's version in the 1950s, Zhuang Yichuan's version and Zhang Guruo's version in the 1980s and 1990s. The purpose is to find out how translation is influenced by cultural constraints and how the translators may react to such constraints. The literature review discusses the development of cultural studies in the translation theory history and the influence of the "cultural turn" on the literary criticism. Chapter Three compares the differences between the four versions in various aspects, including the syntax, the choice of words and the translation of cultural words. It is found that Lin Shu's version highly domesticates the original, that Dong's version is closer to the original than the other modern translations, that Zhang's version with numerous detailed and academic footnotes is both faithful and fluent, and that Zhuang's version is the most precise and fluent one. Then, in Chapter Four I explore the reasons behind all these differences, which include those having to do culture, society, and history, as well as the translators' subjectivities.In the light of our findings, I point out that literary translation criticism should go beyond the linguistic aspect of translation, which is largely confined to error-finding and error-correction, and that the critic's attention should be focused on the cultural, historical and social background or environment in which translations are produced.