A Study On Dong Leshan As A Translator

Dong Leshan, a master of both English and Chinese, was a senior translator and scholar true to the name. His translated works were voluminous and of superior quality. Dong Leshan was renowned in the world of translation for his distinctive selection of original works. However, few scholars touch upon the underlying factors contributing to Dong Leshan's translation selection as well as his unique translation features, which are the very issues the current thesis is intended to address.Based upon the related researches on Dong Leshan, this thesis is designed to conduct a descriptive study of Dong Leshan's translation selection and his translation thoughts, and also to make a tentative analysis of his translation practice, with the hope to derive rich nourishment from Dong Leshan's translation activities as well as his translation practice, and to provide a thinking space in the development of the Chinese translation cause.This thesis is aimed at a systematic exploration of the possible ideologies that influenced very much Dong Leshan's translation selection, by taking a chronological look at his bitter life experiences. Specifically speaking, there were three possible ideologies contributing to Dong Leshan's distinctive translation selection, i.e. nationalism, aspiration for democracy and humanism. In effect, Dong Leshan's humanistic concern was consistent with his aspiration for democracy and his opposition to totalitarianism and. It was his intense loathing for totalitarianism that reflected exactly Dong Leshan's deep yearning for individualism and universal love. Meanwhile, the author of this thesis makes in-depth analyses of Dong Leshan's seminal translated works, namely The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Darkness at Noon to testify the enormous influence of ideology upon his translation selection.Nineteen Eighty-Four is a political classic about totalitarianism. It is considered as Dong Leshan's most representative translated work, in which his translation features are fully embodied. Through a thorough study of the book, the author of this thesis outlines Dong's typical features of translation. Firstly, Dong Leshan adopted mostly the strategy of foreignization and gave proper consideration to domestication when necessary. Secondly, Dong Leshan marked his translation with simple, smooth and colloquial expressions. Thirdly, Dong Leshan upheld a dialectical attitude towards the use of Chinese idioms. Fourthly, Dong Leshan imparted his personality to his translation. Besides, Dong Leshan employed occasionally subtle expressions in his translation out of ideological considerations.Dong Leshan was a translation practitioner who had attained many penetrating thoughts from his long-term translation practice such as literal equivalence and conceptual equivalence, hypotaxis and parataxis, the use of Chinese idioms, and translation and politics, etc. These brilliant thoughts in turn verified his translation practice. Through a comparative study of different Chinese versions of Nineteen Eighty-Four, this thesis shows the merits of Dong Leshan's translation, thus testifying the accuracy and feasibility of his translation thoughts. It is in this sense that Dong Leshan realized a wonderful combination of his translation thoughts and his translation practice.