Stylistic Features Of The Old Man And The Sea Translated By Eileen Chang

The history of modern Chinese literature has long been receiving Eileen Chang as anestablished literary figure celebrated for her unique style in her literary creation. As luckwould have it, however, studies on Chang’s translation seem to be meager. Althoughresearches related are never rare, most of them tend to focus either on historical descriptionof her personal translation or on her self-translation. Besides, there are also sporadicanalyses of single translated texts or comments on her translation criticism. On the otherhand, however, studies about the style of her translation of The Old Man and the Sea arecomparatively much fewer. As is known, The Old Man and the Sea is one of mostcelebrated translations she has rendered, and it may also be noted here that Chang’stranslation of it is the very first Chinese version of the novel and that it stands in a tier ofits own with Chang’s style in her literary writing. In this light, the present thesis is devotedto seek an answer to identify the relationship between the style of Chang and that ofHemingway as they are presented in the translated text. Comparative studies show thatboth of the authors have their own unique writing styles, and as such, Chang’s translationwould naturally bring about an interesting textual outcome, since she herself is a renownedauthor and therefore is as keen to language and style as many other great writers. If wejump out of the notion of faithfulness as it exists in traditional translation theory and if thetranslator and the original writer do not stand at odds, each poled with a style thatcontradicts with the other, then the stylistic analysis of a translated text where these twoencounter one another would offer us some clue to the dynamic relationship between thetranslator and the writer.The author of this thesis believes the notion of faithfulness is but an ideal. Therefore,to assess the translated text with the ideal standard would lead to an embarrassingconclusion. With the cultural turn in translation studies, research on the subjectivity of thetranslator has been inspired and furthered by feminist and post-colonist approaches to translation studies. In this situation, the theory of fidelity is highly marginalized. Thepremise insisted upon in this thesis is that of jumping out of the standard of faithfulnessand the author does not employ it as the standard to assess the quality of the translation.The ultimate objective of this thesis is to sketch out the stylistic features in Chang’stranslation of The Old Man and the Sea, in order to confirm Chang’s identity as a translatoron one hand and to inquire about the stylistic relationship between the author and thetranslator on the other. Through comparative analysis between Hemingway and EileenChang, the thesis discovers where Chang empathized with Hemingway in translating theOld Man and the Sea. The thesis will focus on the subjects as follows: Chang’s translationstyle in The Old Man and the Sea may be described as hybrid, both at once reflecting herown linguistic style while at the same time, deviating from it. While translatingHemingway’s work and composing his intended meanings into Chinese, her own writingstyle also influences her translation. This tendency can be seen in three main areas, namely,her feminine linguistic style, the use of dialect and the combination of Europeanized andrun-on sentences. Then, it comes to how Chang translated Hemingway’s stylistic markers,such as the translation of Spanish expressions, the deviation of pronoun as well astranslation of onomatopoeias and alliteration. At last, it examines how Chang translatedHemingway’s rhetorical devices, including similes, metaphors, parallelism and repetition.The thesis concludes that Chang remains respectful to the original text in terms of structureand content while the finished translation clearly bears her own distinctive style in terms oflinguistic features and sentence structure. It is a manner of creation within the normalrange. Therefore, her translation exerts influences to the target language and bears culturalintentions more than that of the original text, which might be the value of the translators ofliterature works.