A Study Of Zhang Guruo As A Translator

Zhang Guruo is an eminent Chinese translator and leading expert on Thomas Hardy in the twentieth century. Since he made his debut on the Chinese translation scene with his excellent translations of The Return of the Native and Tess of the D'Urbervilles in the 1930s, he has offered a set of high qualified translation works and made indelible contribution to the cause of translation in China. His translations are marked by the faithfulness to the originals, the richness in artistic and academic values. His thoughts on translation, reinforced by his own translation practice, play an important role in the construction of Chinese translation studies.This thesis attempts to conduct an elaborate study of Zhang Guruo's translation thoughts and practice so as to absorb quintessence from his insightful thoughts on translation and his achievements in translation practice. The thesis consists of five chapters besides introduction and conclusion:In the introduction, the author introduces the aim and the structure of this thesis;Chapter One is a brief survey of Zhang Guruo as a translator, covering his translation career influenced by his early life, his remarkable accomplishments in translation;Chapter Two reviews Zhang Guruo's thoughts on translation, and evaluates their significance. His representative thoughts involve the principle of "translating idiomatic originals into idiomatic target language," confirmation of "literary translation both as a science and an art," proposal of combining academic research and translating, and recognition of TL readers' acceptability;Chapter Three expounds the typical features of Zhang Guruo's literary translation, particularly the fictional translations, which include the adoption of Chinese dialects, flexible use of Chinese four-character combinations, employment of reduplicated words and classical Chinese, and offering of numerous detailed and reasonable annotations;Chapter Four makes a tentative comparative study of Zhang Guruo's and Dong Qiusi's versions of David Copperfield in terms of domestication and foreignization;Chapter Five attempts to explore the practical significance of conducting the study of Zhang Guruo as a translator;The conclusion provides the summary of the whole thesis.