Study On The English Versions Of Lun Xun's Short Stories From The Perspective Of Translator's Subjectivity

Lu Xun is such an important person that one can never skip in the fields of Chinese culture study, literature study and ideology study of 20th century. He boasts his influence on the later writers even today and his three collections of short stories "Call to Arms", "Wondering" and "Old Tales Retold" enjoy a great reputation home and aboard.This thesis is a systematic descriptive study on the differences between two comparatively complete English translations of Lu Xun's short stories (Yang Xianyi's translation and Lyell's translation) and is aim to find out the major facts that caused the differences from the perspective of Translator's subjectivity.Through the comparative study on these two English translations, I divided the elements which caused the differences into three categories:In chapter one, I study the influence of the ideology of the translator on the contents the two translators chose and on the interpretations of the source works made by the two translators as well. In Yang's translation, the contents Yang Xianyi chose and the way he interpreted the source works show the revolutionary and fighting aspects of Lu Xun who is full of sympathies toward the working people and proletariats and is ready for a fight against the darkness of the societies anytime while in Lyell's version, we see more desperation of a lonely writer who is wondering where to turn. Because of the same reason, the later ignored the collection of "Old Tales Retold", which is very much a blemish to his "complete" translation.Chapter two is a study on the influence of implied reader which the translator has set on the differences of stylistic between two versions. Yang uses a formal British English in his translation which reproduces the characteristic of Lu Xun's language while Lyell uses a more colloquial American English which makes the translation easier for those American readers to understand though it lost the characteristic of source works. The two translators chose the different way for the same reason, which is to meet the need of the implied reader.In the last chapter, I study the influence of the translator's identity on the methods in which the two translators reproduced the information of the source works. As a professional Lu Xun researcher, Lyell tried his best to reproduce as much information of the source works as he can, such as the contrary between the classical style and the colloquial style and the literal images; while Yang Xianyi, the professional translator, omitted the unnecessary information as long as the readers were able to understand the translation.In short, the major facts that coursed the differences between the two translations are the translators'subjectivities though there might be some other elements as well.