Stylistic Aspects Of Literary Translation

The appearance of Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County received wide and immediate acclamation in 1992 and is considered as the most profound and powerful novella of the century. The language of the novel is unique. Waller's writing style is realism, economy, sensuous, beauty and magic. Especially the novel's rhetoric aesthetics is praised by literatures. After the translation by Mei Jia was published, it is also warmly welcomed by Chinese readers. This thesis analyzes Mei Jia's translation from stylistic aspects (including phonological overregularity, lexical expression and syntactic overregularity) and the traditional Chinese aesthetic theory.Stylistics has always been used to analyze and evaluate literary works. It has rarely been considered in relation to literary translation. With the knowledge of stylistics, it might be easier for the translators to find out the features of the original and then translate it faithfully. Professor Shen Dan of Beijing University has made achievements in this field.This thesis tries to find out the possibility of linking stylistics approach and fiction translation together. Stylistics is a systematic theory that will sharpen a translator's discernment and give a translator some help to retain the original style. This thesis is to study the language of the novel from stylistic aspects of literature translation and then give my opinion on the Chinese version of James Waller's novel The Bridges of Madison County and one appreciation work to the novel by Xiuying Wang. By commenting on its gains and losses of the translation in stylistic features in the process of translating from English to Chinese, I try to remind translators to be very careful of functions of each stylistic feature and translators also should have the sense of analyzing the novel from the stylistic aspects and the traditional Chinese aesthetic theory.The present thesis consists of the following chapters:Chapter One is a review of the latest development of style criticism in fiction translation and point out some insufficiencies in traditional translation theory. Then, I would introduce the approach of stylistics and the term "anti-translatability" to say that style can be mastered and is translatable, which is the basis of the following discussion.Chapter Two is a detailed explication of the theory of style and stylistics, especially the application theory of stylistics in fiction translation, and then I would offer a list of stylistic markers that may be taken into consideration while doing literary translation. If the translator fails to recognize those stylistic markers, he is likely to involve his subjectivity in his jobs and produce several mistakes of over-fluency.Chapter Three is a study of the Chinese version of The Bridges of Madison County by Mei Jia. My analysis is made from three aspects: modes of phonological deviation, lexical expression and syntax. Through these examples, I would like to show that a word, a sentence or a point of view of narration might be singled out deliberately by the writer to realize a thematically or aesthetically motivated function, which no translator can afford to ignore. In the Western stylistics theory reductionistic method of text analysis is helpful for us to analyze the text concretely, but it is not enough for us to translate and appreciate the text. The traditional Chinese aesthetic theory can make some complement to the Western stylistics. An important category in Chinese aesthetics, yijing (artistic ideorealm) is at the core of literary translation fundamentals. Whether the artistic ideorealm of a novel can be reproduced or not is important for us to study and appreciate the translation of the novel, so this thesis is also a study of the artistic ideorealm.