On Translation Strategies In English Version Of To Live From The Perspective Of Translation Variation Theory

Traditionally literary translation is viewed as an appropriate transformation between two languages. Actually, it is not an easy task and influenced by many factors. The differences in linguistic structure, thinking mode, culture, and readers’horizon of expectations should be taken into consideration in literary translation. Over the past years, the study of literary translation has made great achievements, however there still exist some shortcomings and gaps need to be filled. Most of the studies simply discuss literary translation from the perspective of Skopos Theory, Functional Equivalence or Relevance Theory. Some study fields are seldom touched.The translation variation theory as a totally new concept in translation studies was first put forward by Professor Huang Zhonglian in the late1990s. It provides a new angle for doing some meaningful researches on the literary translation. There are seven translation variation strategies, supplement, deletion, edition, reduction, summarization, combination and adaptation. In the thesis the author takes English version of Chinese famous writer Yu Hua’s novel. To Live as the research material. Through analyzing its seven translation variation strategies and comparing the original work to the English version, the author comes to the following conclusions. First, the English version of To Live translated by Michael Berry is a great success. The translator adopted various translation variation strategies to make the original work readable, acceptable and be perceived by readers accurately. Second, literary translation is an extremely difficult active. Translators ought not to just rely on western theories. No matter western theories or native theories, both of them can be applied in literary translation as long as reasonable. Last, translation variation theory instructs translation practice a lot. In the process of translation, only translators put their subjectivity into full play, seriously concern about various influencing factors and then adopt suitable translation strategies can literary works be translated successfully.The thesis can be divided into five parts. Chapter one is a lead-in part of the thesis. Chapter two is a brief review of the past studies in the field of translation variation theory. Chapter three is an introduction of Yu Hua’s novel To Live and its English version. Chapter four is a detailed analysis of translation variation strategies applied in the version. Chapter five is a conclusion of the whole research.