A Contrastive Study On The Two Chinese Versions Of Gone With The Wind: From The Position Of Translated Literature In Literary Polysystem

Polysystem theory regards translated literature as an indispensable part of literary polysystem. The position of translated literature in the literary polysystem has a great impact on the translator's translation behavior. When the translated literature is in a central position of the literary polysystem, the translation activity will participate in creating a new and primary model and bring in not only new literary model but also new ideas as a revolutionary force. Under such circumstances, the translator usually breaks the norms of the native literature and adopts a foreignization strategy so as to keep the"adequacy"of the original text. When the translated literature is in a peripheral position of the literary polysystem, the translator will seek an existing secondary model for the foreign text. Under such circumstances, the translated literature becomes a conservative force, and the translator usually adopts the domestication translation strategy, including random deletion or abridgement of the source text, or squeezing the source text into the existing target literary model. As a result, it gives rise to the"inadequacy"of the translation and a more readily accepted translation by the readers in the receiving culture.Based on the hypothesis of polysystem theory that the position of translated literature in the literary polysystem exerts a great influence on the norms and translation strategy, the author of this thesis makes a contrastive study on the two Chinese versions of Gone with the Wind by American writer Margaret Mitchell, respectively translated by Fu Donghua in 1940 and Chen Liangting et al. in 1990, so as to lend support to the assumption that the position of translated literature has a great impact on the translator's choice of translation strategies. The present study adopts a descriptive methodology and makes a contrastive analysis on the translation strategies embodied in the process of translating words, sentence structures and paragraphs by the two different translators. There is a gap of half a century in the time when the two versions were produced. During the fifty years, the position of translated literature has experienced great changes, i.e. the translated literature has moved from a peripheral position in the 1940s to a central position in the literary polysystem in the 1990s. As translated literature occupied a peripheral position in the literary polysystem in the 1940s, Fu Donghua tended to adopt domestication strategy in his version; however, as translated literature gradually moved from the peripheral position to the central position in the literary polysystem in the 1990s, Chen Liangting et al. tended to employ foreignization strategy in their version.