Characteristics Of Modern Vernacular Chinese Words In Lu Xun's Works And Their English Translation

The research on modern vernacular Chinese words proves to be an indispensable part of the study of modern Chinese lexicon. The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun, published in 1921, is the first Chinese literary masterpiece that has ever won a worldwide popularity. This novel well conveys Lu Xun's language style, namely, transparent, precise and logical. The analysis of nouns, verbs and adjectives between the comparison of Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's English version of The True Story of Ah Q and the version issued by Hong Kong Baili Bookstore is supposed to explore the characteristics of modern vernacular Chinese words in Lu Xun's works and their application in translation practice.It is proposed in this thesis that Lu Xun's usage of modern vernacular words is rather creative in his literary works. He excels in coining a new word according to the rules of word-formation or endowing a given word with some implied meanings according to the semantics of the language of Chinese. He is keen on borrowing some words of classical Chinese and loan words according to the contexts as well. All of these language applications appropriately express his thoughts and feelings and are prior to the use of any figure of speech. The multiple utilizations of the same word as different parts of speech make the Chinese vocabulary more vivid and interesting. This flexible use of words is thoroughly practised by Lu Xun in order to achieve a sense of humor, irony, exactness and sometimes alarm as well.To achieve a dynamic/functional equivalence by Eugene Nida between the original text and the translated text, contrastive studies and statistical analysis of the two English versions of The True Story of Ah Q reveal that (1) when nouns are translated in this novel, the linguistic phenomena of utilization of monosyllabic nouns, nouns used as verbs, contemporary meaning versus Lu Xun's intention of the same nouns, nouns in Shaoxing dialect, nouns with a lower frequency in contemporary time and nouns with a special cultural background should be taken notice of; (2) when verbs are translated, the linguistic phenomena of utilization of monosyllabic verbs, utilization of polysemous verbs, verbs in Shaoxing dialect and verbs with same morphemes in a reversed order should be noted; (3) when adjectives are translated, the linguistic phenomena of utilization of monosyllabic adjectives, adjectives used as verbs, utilization of polysemous adjectives, contemporary meaning versus Lu Xun's intention of the same adjectives, adjectives with a lower frequency in contemporary time and adjectives with"然"should be paid attention to.