| This thesis focuses on the imagery translation in Romance of Tang Dynasty. Eleven Tang short stories have been selected, they are the stories of Miss Ren, Yingying, Li Wa, Huo Xiaoyu, Wushuang, Liu Yi, Kunlun Slave, Curly-bearded Hero, and The Departed Spirit, The World in a Pillow, The Betrothal Inn. Each story has 2 to 5 translations. There are 6 Chinese translators as well as 13 foreign translators, altogether 34 translation versions. The thesis mainly uses the Frame theory, the Trajector—Landmark theory and the Image Schema theory to analyze the different degrees of subjective creation by translators. Imagery should be preserved, restructured or created based on its source and essence, in order that the imagery in the original texts will be able to transmit a feeling of beauty also in the translations. A methodology of corpora is used throughout the thesis to make the analysis scientific and impersonal.The imagery in Romance of Tang Dynasty means the visual language containing allusions and customs, depicting images of roles and combined actions which have a strong sense of screen. Among these imagery, allusions and customs belong to static imagery while roles' images and combined actions belong to dynamic imagery. Based on the results of the translations, there is imagery in translation besides imagery in source text. The imagery in translation is created by translators to make the text more visual and lively.Chapter One focuses on the translation of static imagery with Frame theory from Cognitive Linguistics. The subjective creation of the translators is relatively limited in this case. Objective creation should be chosen to translate the imagery both existed in source language and target language. Under the frequent culture communication nowadays, surface imagery existed in source language should also be preserved with hints in source texts. Passive creation will be the only choice for the translation of profound imagery. That means translators should illuminate the imagery in target text or give annotations afterward to make it easier for target readers.Chapter Two focuses on the translation of inexplicit dynamic imagery. Partial subjective creation should be taken to restructure the imagery in a reasonable way. The specific ways are: to restructure the grammatical imagery, to transfer the perceptional imagery, to exchange the rhetorical imagery and to rationalize the scene imagery. These methods indicate the creative and subjective activities of the translators, equal to the partial subjective creation.Chapter Three focuses on the new imagery in target texts. These images do not exist in source text. They are the result of the complete subjective creation of the translations. The imagery includes part of the description of appearances and backgrounds, part of the romance of mentality and the majority of the abstract verbs. The translators fully exhibit their subjective creation by metaphorizing the appearances and backgrounds, changing the abstract verbs into concrete verbs and materializing the process of mentality. The new imagery makes the target text more attractive and lively.The conclusion of the thesis is that different degrees of subjective creation should be taken in the case of different imagery. The ultimate goal is to keep the meaningful modality and the sense of beauty in target text. From the methodology of corpora and an angle of subjective creation, we can scientifically review the achievements as well as the limitations of the translations of Romance of Tang Dynasty. In addition, some successful treatments also serve as a reference for the solution to similar problems. |
PDF Full Text Request