A Comparative Study Of The Three Chinese Versions Of Emma From The Perspective Of "Faithfulness,Expressiveness And Closeness"

Translation criterion has always been the focus of translation studies, the subject causing endless argument in translation circles. Enlightened by Yan Fu's"faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance"and Tytler's three"laws of translation", combining his years of teaching practice and experience in translation, as early as 1979, Liu Zhongde puts forth his three-character criterion—"faithfulness, expressiveness and closeness"which exerts certain influence on the translation field. The so-called"faithfulness, expressiveness and closeness"is defined as"to be faithful to the content of the original; to be as expressive as the original and to be as close to the original style as possible."The principle is based on the full understanding of"faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance". It is the inheritance and development of traditional translation theories.Based on Liu Zhongde's three-character principle, the current study concentrates on the analysis and comparison of the three Chinese versions of Emma in terms of the reproduction of content, language and style of the original. The three Chinese versions of Emma are translated respectively by Zhang Jinghao, Sun Zhili, Zhu Qingying and Zhu Wenguang. By doing this, the author aims to provide a clue for readers to read these versions, and learn much from the techniques that the translators adopt, even more from effective renderings of difficult expressions.The whole thesis falls into five parts: the introduction makes a brief statement on the main points of the current research, and points out the purpose and significance of the study. The literature review introduces the current situation of the research into Emma's Chinese versions in China, with the purpose to show the practicability and the novelty of the study on Emma from this perspective. The third part serves as the theoretical foundation. It introduces the origin and development of the three-character principle. Then it provides the elaborate illustration of the three characters—"faithfulness, expressiveness and closeness". The fourth part is the most important part. In the light of the theory, this part discusses different interpretations and illustrates the differences by concrete examples and detailed analysis. The last part is the conclusion part where the objective comments on the three translators will be included in this part.