Comparisons Of Nicknames In The Three English Versions Of Shui Hu Zhuan

Shui Hu Zhuan is one of four famous classics of Chinese literature. The threeinfluential English versions are Pearl S. Buck's All Men Are Brothers, Sidney Shapiro'sOutlaws of the March, and John&Alex Dent-Young's The Marches of Mount Liang.Nickname is one kind of appellation, and it is called "诨名(hún míng)" or "绰号(chuòhào)", which has rich cultural elements in it, working as a mirror to reflect the looks,nature or the capability of a person, with the flavor refined or popular, commendatory orderogatory. The one hundred and eight heroes of Liang Shan have their own nicknames.These nicknames are divided into four categories: appearance, personality, specialty andothers. These nicknames use Chinese historical heroes, or base on the names of Chineseancient legendary figures or animals, or utilize some kinds of weapons names that areunique in China or holy confer titles that are rich in Chinese cultural appeals, or exploitghosts, gods, which are also full of Chinese culture, or adopt some identity names that areunique in Chinese culture. This paper will analyze the cultural connotations of everygroup nicknames step by step.Cultural distortion refers to a phenomenon that certain cultural connotations are lostto varying degree during translating, which is caused by different cultural features ofdifferent languages. From the features of nicknaming the characters in Shui Hu Zhuan, wecan find that the nicknames in the novel are loaded with profound culture, part of which ispeculiar to the Chinese people. Venuti put forward two translation strategies from theperspective of cultural transmission: domestication and foreignization. Foreignization isbeneficial to keep the source language and the cultural differences, which can make thetarget language readers to understand the foreign customs and cultures. Domesticationmakes the translated text comply with the expressive habits of the fresh for the readers,while the translated text may be alien to the readers, which inevitably will cause difficultyin understanding the contents of the source language text target language, which can beaccepted easily and read fluently. It is closer to the target language readers, but it cut theoriginal culture and the cultural characteristics. Based on the parallel corpus, the essay decides to compare the intra-lingual andinter-lingual translation of108nicknames of the three English versions of Shui Hu Zhuan,and tries to discover the similarities and differences of translators' translation strategies,and then talks about the cultural distortion caused, in order to discover the translationstyles of the translators, which can play theoretical and practical significance fortranslation. Buck puts focus on the form of the translation and uses the semantictranslation to take effort keeping the original style and meanings of the source language.Her translation is smooth and fluent in the manner of target writing, while it is not as neatas the original writing. Dent-Young's translation is based on communicative translation,and they try to avoid the improper meanings and association in English, and they areoriented to target language culture. Their translation is too free to convey the originalmeaning or style for their emphasis on the effort of the target language. Shapiro'stranslation corresponds with English writing habits, and he tries to preserve the style of thesource text and keeps the translated text concise and smooth. His translation is morenatural and faithful to the source language culture than the other two translators'.This paper collects the numbers of nicknames comprehensively and objectively andprovides more translation of texts for nickname-translating in Shui Hu Zhuan. What'smore, it provides the research methods for the translation of appellations of other books.