A Comparative Study On Allusion Translation In Hsiung's And Xu's Versions Of Xixiang Ji

The number of allusions is very large in classical drama. In this thesis, the author conducts a study on the allusion in the classical drama Xixiang Ji from the perspective of the two strategies known as domestication and foreignization. The former is TL culture-oriented, focusing on the idiomatic expressions of the TL culture and resisting those of the SL culture. But the latter is just the opposite. It is SL culture-oriented, focusing on retaining the specific expressions of the SL culture.Considering that the handling of cultural elements is a continuum from domestication to foreignization, the author of this thesis divides this process into five categories. In addition, some specific translation strategies are identified according to the degree to which the original cultural images are retained in the target language.The author of this thesis attemps to make a detailed comparison between the two English versions and offer an analysis by adopting quantitative and qualitative methods. The author establishes a parallel corpus containing the original text and its two English translated versions and aligns the corpus at paragraph level, in which 81 samples are randomly selected from Xixiang Ji and its two English versions.From the comparison and analysis, we find that although both the S.I.Hsiung and Xu Yuanchong have both adopted domestication and foreignization strategies in their translation, they each have their own preference. Hsiung tends to use foreignization strategy, while Xu prefers domestication strategy. Moreover, this study proves that there is a statistically significant difference in the choice of translation strategies employed by Hsiung and Xu respectively.