"Thick Translation" In Zhang Guruo’s Chinese Version Of Tess Of The D’Urbervilles

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a renowned African American, has brought the term“thick translation” to the public in an article published in1993, which is grafted onClifford Geertz’s characterization of the work of the ethnographer as “thickdescription”. Appiah defined “Thick Translation”, which aims at providing abundantbackground information to arouse interests in the target readers, as annotations to theepistemological complexities and implications in the original text.In this thesis, the author investigates the typical example of thick translation inChinese translation history-Zhang Guruo’s translation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of theD’Urbervilles from the perspective of thick translation. Based on the predecessors’achievements, through the analysis of reasons of thick translation, it is proved to beclosely linked with cultural factors such as ideology, poetics, patronage andreadership.The author adopts the methodology of descriptive translation studies andclassifies the thick translation of translated Tess of the D’Urbervilles into threecategories: preface, additions and footnotes. Then, the author makes an analysis ofthe reasons of the appearance of such a phenomenon and explores the influenceimposed on the translator by ideology, poetics, patronage and readership, consideringthat the birth of the translation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles as a thick translation hasclose tie with the contemporary social-cultural background. It can be concluded thatit is the ideology of the society, the ideology of the translator, the status quo ofculture, the translator’s preference of Chinese Rustic Novels, the readers thetranslator bore in mind and his teacher Ding Zhunfu, who played a role of patron thatdirectly or indirectly give birth to the translation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, whichis by no means a coincidence.It is undeniable that Zhang Guruo’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles has exerted greatinfluence in the society. Not only did Zhang perform the work of a translator, but also he sounded the alarm clock to the Chinese people in crisis and aroused hiscountrymen to fight against the feudalism, making it become a masterpiece inChina’s translation history. The author just seizes the characteristic-thick translation.On the one hand, she proves the reasonable existence and historical importance oftranslated Tess of the D’Urbervilles through studies from the new angle; and on theother hand, the author also makes some theoretical explorations on thick translationthrough studies on Zhang Guruo’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and further defines thefunction and the form of thick translation, in hope of providing a new explanation totranslation studies.