A Study On Lin Taiyi's English Version Of Jing Hua Yuan

Jing Hua Yuan is a typical example of erudite novels that feature their authors' inclination to show off their erudition indulgently, which poses a problem to translators. On the basis of the translation theories related with Skopos theory, functional equivalence and relevance, this thesis evaluates Lin Taiyi's translation of Jing Hua Yuan from macro-micro perspectives.The macro-analysis is an attempt to find out how Lin Taiyi handled the part of the source text for flaunting the author's knowledge which actually digresses from the theme of the fiction and thus reduces Jing Hua Yuan's artistic value or readability. Taking target readers as center, Lin Taiyi translated the digressions selectively. She translated in detail the contents about traditional Chinese medicine, tea-drinking, calculation and the art of practicing archery but generalized the contents about the discussions of phonetics, literature and entertainments. Lin' translation is interesting and readable as a whole.The micro-analysis is a linguistic and cultural survey, a stylistic study included. It is found that Lin's translation features colloquial and pithy style and demonstrates great flexibility in translating words and sentences. This renders her translation functionally equivalent to the source language. In her translation of cultural elements, the approach of domestication is given a priority over that of foreignization, which can be seen in her translation of cultural contexts, measuring units, names of the one hundred talented ladies and allusions. In addition, this paper also points out some mistranslations in Lin's rendition, which result from the printing errors, the translator's misunderstanding of the original text or her intentional changes to the original.To sum up, Lin Taiyi's translation is succinct, fluent, reasonable, interesting and readable enough to be referred to as a wonderful piece of translated work as a whole. The way she dealt with the digressions and the "sentence-for-sentence" translational approach she adopted may be used for reference in future translations of Chinese classical novels, especially of erudite novels.