On William A.Lyell's Translation Of Lu Xun's Yao And Gu Xiang

Lu Xun (1881-1936) is not only a great thinker and a revolutionary, but also a renowned man of letters. In his lifetime, he wrote altogether 33 short stories, collected in 3 volumes, i.e., Na Han (《呐喊》). Pang Huang (《彷徨》) and Gu Shi Xin Bian (《故事新编》). They are welcomed both at home and abroad, and more than 10 translators have rendered some or all the short stories into English. The translations have also drawn researchers'attention. William A. Lyell (1930-1995) has done a great many studies of modern Chinese literature, and is well-known as an American expert on Lu Xun; he has also published his translation of Lu Xun's short stories Na Han and Pang Huang, collected in Diary of a Madman and Other Stories (1990). However, Lyell's translation is not attached great importance to, and it is the very motivation that the author initiates the thesis.Francis George Steiner's (born April 23,1929) hermeneutic motion theory, which is mainly embodied in After Babel:Aspects of Language and Translation, has demonstrated the process of translating in view-of hermeneutics. and many scholars have proved its effectiveness and significance in the analytical study of translation practice. Therefore, the present thesis attempts to analyze the English versions by William A. Lyell from the perspective of George Steiner's hermeneutic theory, especially the hermeneutic motion theory with the four movements of trust, aggression, incorporation and restitution. It will be adopted to show how Lyell represents the distinctive features of Lu Xun's short stories.Chapter One begins with the background of the present study, the purpose and the structure of the thesis. Chapter Two reviews the historical development of hermeneutics and its connection with translation, and then elaborates Steine's hermeneutic theory and the core perspective "four-fold motion". In addition, it introduces C-E translation of Lu Xun's short stories as well as the current research on Lyell's English versions. Chapter Three deals with the analytical study of Lyell's translation of Yao and Gu Xiang based on the movements of trust, aggression, incorporation and restitution:Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang's translated versions are also adopted for comparison. Priority is given to the discussion on the motion of incorporation, which, covering the lexical, syntactical and textual levels, elaborates on Lyell's strategies in handling the Chinese culture-loaded words, the local expressions, the punctuation, the rearrangement of the text and characterization. Chapter Four points out the illuminations drawn from Lyell's translation. The strategy of foreignization combined with annotations fulfills the tasks of conveying Lu Xun's exact meaning and introducing Chinese culture to English readers, which is a great treasure to translators of the time. Chapter Five is the conclusion of the study, stating the shortcomings and the suggestions for further studies.