A Comparative Study Of The English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji

Text linguistics provides a brand new perspective for translation study. It regards a text as a communicative occurrence, and emphasizes on equivalence at textual and communicative level. It is hold that in translation what is delivered is the meaning and communicative function of the original text, and only when the seven standards of textuality (cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality) are all satisfied, a text is communicative. In translation, it will be helpful for a translator to produce a better work if the standards of textuality are well considered.Fu Sheng Liu Ji, being a classic of Chinese literature, has been highly praised and widely welcomed ever since its publication, for its sincerity, style of autobiography, and vivid depiction of the characters. In1935and1983, Lin Yutang and Leonard Pratt, Chiang Su-hui translated it into English respectively. The two English versions are both famous and have attracted many scholars. However, their research mainly focused on the following four aspects, i.e. the translation of culture and cultural words, aesthetics aspect, linguistic features, and subjectivity of translators. There is rare contrastive study of the two English versions from the perspective of text linguistics.Against this background, this thesis takes the seven standards of textuality as its theoretical framework and attempts to do a comparative study of the two English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji in order to explore the similarities and differences between the two versions concerning the seven standards of textuality, the reasons behind the differences, and to find out some inspirations for translation. Comparative study and text analysis is applied in this thesis as the research methodology.It is found that in terms of the seven standards of textuality, there exist both similarities and differences between the two English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji. The similarity is that, both of the versions are cohesive, coherent, have perfectly considered situational factors, realized the translators’intentions, provided suitable level of informativity and intertextuality, and achieved high acceptability. There are three differences between the two versions. The first one is that, the two versions provide target readers with different levels of informativity:Lin’s version is of a lower infomativity compared with Pratt and Chiang’s version, for that a lot of notes and appendixes with rich related cultural information are provided in the latter, which have effectively upgraded the informativity. The second one is that, the two English versions put emphasize on different intertextuality relationships:Lin’s version emphasizes target text intertextuality more by changing images unique to Chinese culture into their English counterparts, while Pratt and Chiang’s version put more emphasis on the source text intertextulity by keeping the original image and providing explanations. The third one is that, the intentions of the two versions are different:Lin Yutang translates it for that he appreciates the heroine Yun and her husband’s way of life so much that he feels their story should be told to the whole world; while Pratt and Chiang’s intention in translating it is that, in their eyes being a biography the text is a good social document which reveals glimpses into the Chinese society in Ch’ing Dynasty. It is believed that the cause of the first two differences lies in the third one. The intentions of the translators in translating it are different, so that to successfully realize their intentions, they provide target readers with different levels of informativity and emphasize on different intertextuality relationships. From the comparative study it can be concluded that, translator’s intention in translation is of vital importance, it can determine whether the infomativity of the original text is downgraded, upgraded or just kept the same, and which intertextuality relationship is emphasized on. Correspondingly, translators can adopt different methods to realize their intentions. When only the story or the general idea is of importance, downgrading of the informativity and domestication should be adopted to case the target readers’understanding process. When cultural aspects are supposed to be introduced to target readers, foreignization should be adopted and it is better to provide more related information by upgrading the informativity.