On Literary Translation With Special Reference To The Study On Three Chinese Versions Of Pride And Prejudice

In this thesis, the author attempts to make a critical analysis of the three Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice based on the integrated study on literary translation in terms of its characteristics, criteria and principles, basic translating strategies as well as translation criticism. For one thing, the disputes and problems involved in literary translation are thoroughly approached with examples from the versions being analyzed. For the other, the quality and standard of literary translating is further explored as the result of the study on how different effects being achieved by adopting different translating strategies in the three versions. Besides, mistranslations and inappropriate translations caused by misinterpretations are also pointed out and provided with the author's own translations with the hope to contribute to the improvement of the quality of the translated versions.The thesis falls into six parts.Chapter One-The characteristics, criteria and principles as well as basic translating strategies of literary translation are approached in this chapter. Translation is the art of recreation and literary translation stands out with its literary nature. The genre of fictional translation has much less formal constraints compared with poetic translation, thus its translators are more inclined to focus on the represented events or characters and to overlook the artistry involved in the use of the medium. As for translation criteria, Mr. Liu Zhongde's "faithfulness, expressiveness, and closeness" are adopted for critical analysis of the three versions. Basic translating methods are explored with "literal translation" in language aspect and "foreignization" in cultural aspect adopted as the primary methods.Chapter Two- The significance of translation criticism for literary translation is explored in this chapter. First of all, through comparative study, merits and defects of each version can be brought into prominence so that better versions can be selected and recommended to readers. Secondly, the quality and standard of literary translating can be improved as the result of the study on how different effects being achieved by adopting different translating strategies and methods. Thirdly, translation criticism can be a good help for the improvement of the quality of the translated versionsthemselves.Chapter Three-The theme and style of Pride and Prejudice as well as its author's creative intention are briefly studied because translation criticism can not be effective unless it is based on literary criticism. Only with a deep understanding of the original work's theme, style and writer's intention, is it possible for a translator to have a truthful reproduction of it. And likely, the judgment of a better translation can only be convincing when it is supported with strong evidence from the original work itself. Thus the theme, style and its author's writing intention are briefly analyzed to serve as grounds in judging what is a better translation.Chapter Four- As for contents, faithfulness is of primary concern. There are cases of ideological and cultural unfaithfulness in all three versions, the former is attributable to misunderstandings in grammatical sense or contextual misinterpretation; the latter is the result of cultural insensitivity or lacking cultural awareness. Examples of unfaithfulness at lexical and sentence levels along with detailed analysis of their causes are given. Moreover, the author's own translations are provided when none of the versions presents a proper translation.Chapter Five-As for language, whether the translated versions are as expressive as the original is examined in four aspects: accuracy, distinctiveness, vividness and naturalness. As English is a hypotactic language while Chinese a paratactic language, sometimes, ellipses like the omission of connectives are needed, so as to be as natural as the original. And due to different syntactic structures, there are different preferences for usage of pronouns, nouns and verbs in two languages, so alterations are sometimes needed t...