A Study Of Lao She’s Translation Of The Apple Cart From The Memetic Perspective

Lao She, a famous novelist and dramatist in Chinese literature, was a prolific writer whose literary works had distinctive features in its vivid language, careful depiction and appropriate humor and satire. Some of his works reflects traditional Beijing custom, culture and its people, which form a unique Beijing style. Lao She’s literary works are very popular among readers, and there are many researches on his works. However, he remains unknown as a translator. He was good at English and went abroad visiting and lecturing twice. Besides his translation of some poems and articles, George Bernard Shaw’s drama The Apple Cart was his only published translation.Lao She tried his best to be faithful to the original text and close to the original style in the translation of the drama. Some language in his translation represented his own style. Yet, Zhu Guangqian once pointed out that, some of his translations were very flexible while some others were obviously literal translation. The thesis takes this as the starting point, and analyzes Lao She’s translation of the drama under the guidance of memetics.Memetics is a theory about transmission and evolution of cultural information. It provides a new perspective for translation studies. Under the guidance of the basic principles of memetics and Chesterman’s translation memetics, this thesis analyzes Lao She’s translation of The Apple Cart, aiming at discovering his style in the translation and the reasons for the employment of translation strategies. Besides, the thesis tries to make it clear that there are different norms affecting the translator’s choice in translation at different periods of time; as translation norms change with the development of society and culture, translation should also make change to better fit in the new environment.