A Study On Dickens' Novels Translated By Linshu

At the beginning of the 20th century, Linshu, who is a famous translator and writer, cooperated with an interpretor Weiyi, translated five novels written by Charles Dickens. He is the first person who introduced the 19th British critical realistic writer Dickens to Chinese readers. Depending on his deep literary thoughts and imaginative abilities, he connected recording with creation, which provided unique circumstances to the 20th Chinese literature. Studying his prefaces and postscripts of translations of Dickens' novels, we get to know his translating thoughts and theories, by which explained how his works have great influence on the development of Chinese literature's modernization. This is the key point to study Linshu and Lin's translating novels.This paper is composed by five chapters. The first chapter is about the specialities of studying Lin's translation and the situation of studying Dickens' novels. The second chapter summarizes the background of Lin's translations of Dickens' novels and his theories of translation. The third chapter elaborates the features of Lin's translations of Dickens' novels using "David Copperfield" as an example, which gives preference to the analysis of translating features of Lin's translation. It is mainly about liberal translation and literal translation, foreignization and domestication, faithfulness and unfaithfulness, including the writing features of Western and Chinese novels. The fourth chapter expounds the impacts of Lin's translation on the modernization of Chinese Literature from the four aspects of theme, character, plot and language in the view of comparative literature. The fifth chapter analyzes the present research materials to find out the influence of Lin's translation on the " May Fourth " authors, including Qian Zhongshu, Laoshe, and Bajin. The conclusion of the thesis states the historical state of Lin's translating novels and the meaning of Lin's translations of Dickens' novels. Lin's translating novels and the prefaces and postscripts of Lin's translating novels have social and literary functions which couldn't be ignored.