The Travel Of Mental Culture

As a representative piece of root-seeking literature, Qi Wang has attracted a lot of attention since it was published in 1984. Taking the life of educated youngsters as the subject matter, this novel tells about the pursuit of spiritual life buried in traditional culture by the educated youngsters represented by Wang Yisheng. It has been studied widely and profoundly from various aspects by domestic academic circles. However, though there are some English versions, it is a great pity that little attention has been paid on them.It is generally accepted that translation studies have taken the "cultural turn" since 1990s. Lots of scholars propose theories from different aspects. In this thesis, Susan Bassnett's cultural translation theory, Lefevere's ideology constraints theory and Toury's norm theory are adopted as theoretical grounds to explore the translation of distinctive Chinese cultural elements in this novelette. Applying these theories, the author of this thesis compares and contrasts Qi Wang and The King of Chess-one of its English versions, discusses the success and failure of the translation and analyzes whether the information, especially cultural information, has been transmitted exactly, so that the understanding and appreciation of the source text and the target text are deepened.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one sets forth the reasons for the present study and reviews the research of Qi Wang in domestic academic circles. Since there are few studies of the English versions of Qi Wang, similar studies of other works and the methods are also reviewed. What is more, the aims of studying Qi Wang are also stated. The second chapter introduces Ah Cheng and Qi Wang as well as its English version-The King of Chess and the translator. In the third chapter, Susan Bassnett's cultural translation theory, Lefevere's ideology constraints theory and Toury's norm theory are stated. The fourth chapter adopts these translation theories and endeavors to explore how the implicit cultural elements as represented by the Cultural Revolution, Chinese chess and Taoism, are dealt with in translation. The last chapter draws a conclusion, points out the limitations of this thesis, and makes the suggestions for further studies.