A Comparative Study On Two Translations Of The Picture Of Dorian Gray From The Perspective Of Literary Stylistics

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's only novel, embodies the writer's style greatly by showing his skillful descriptive methods and aesthetic ideas. Through his intuitive or purposive choice of the syntax and diction to control prose rhythm, the flexible manipulation of the prose tones, and other stylistic devices, the writer describes different moods and promotes his motifs. The introduction of literary stylistic approach in the comparative study of the two translations of this novel is to provide more precise translation standards which help to improve the quality of the translation of literary works. Literary stylistics serves as a bridge between literature and linguistics, using the linguistic methods to analyze literary phenomena.This thesis begins with the introduction of the notion of literary stylistics together with the development of translation criteria in the West and in China. What follows is the discussion of achieving stylistic equivalence in literary translation. In Chapter two the stylistic characteristics of Oscar Wilde and his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray are discussed, and the introduction of the novel into Chinese is introduced in detail. Chapter III, IV, and V discuss the comparative study of the two translations with the adoption of stylistic approach, to be exact, in perspectives of the rendering of the prose rhythm, tones, and other prominent stylistic devices used by Oscar Wilde in his novel. Through this study a conclusion is drawn: the literary stylistic approach can be adopted as a good way to improve the translation quality and standard, and in the translating process, the stylistic devices adopted in the source text should be paid special attention to; what's more, the translators should make every effort to improve his/her sensitivity toward the style of both the source language and the target language.