| Traditional studies of translation mainly focus on the degree of the resemblance between the original text and the translation, and neglect the description of the translator behavior and the forces behind it. Under Professor Zhou Lingshun’s "Truth-seeking-Utility-attaining" Evaluative Model of Continuum based on the translator behavior, this thesis attempts to give a detailed analysis on Cheng Naishan’s behavior on the basis of her processing of language features in her version of The Joy Luck Club. That is to say, the author intends to give a description to Cheng Naishan’s "Utility-attaining" strategies and analyze her motivations, by which the author hopes to generalize a perspective of translation criticism centering on translator behavior.Among those four translated versions of The Joy Luck Club, Cheng Naishan’s is a book with significance of milestone. In the Feelings after Translating, she stated that ’In order to consider Chinese readers’reading habits, the translation attempts to keep the witty expression and American humors of the original text. So during the process of translating, Cheng adopted the strategies of both literal and compiled translation, especially for the titles, which were added by the interpreter herself. With the purpose of making the new version more fluent, and more faithful to the source text, the translator rewrote, hashed and thought over and over the translation work word for word and sentence for sentence this time. And with the effort to make the translation fit Chinese readers’ reading habits, Cheng also deleted some notes, which are designed for those foreign readers who have little knowledge of Chinese culture by the original author.(see程乃姗,2006)From the data the writer collected, Cheng Naishan’s version of2006is the most popular. Because her version has made Chinese readers clearly understand Chinese Americans’state wandering between Asia and Western culture and identity when living in American. Just as she puts "We know very little about Chinese Americans and sometimes we distinguish overseas Chinese between Chinese businessman only according to whether they have naturalized or not. In other words, we can’t figure out their puzzles and losses wandering between Chinese and American culture and value just like a pendulum without being there in person. So I came up with the idea to introduce this book to Chinese readers."(see程乃姗,2006), she has made great contribution to the spread of this novel. Over the years, translators and scholars have talked a lot about Cheng’s version, but regard the language in her translation is smooth and exquisite. Still, there are few detailed studies on this translation, and we also can hardly find papers or works on this translation from the perspective of translator behavior.Because the research of translator behavior was under the background of descriptive translation study, translation critics should give objective analysis to the translator behavior. In addition, the translator bears double responsibilities which are decided by their two basic attributes-language and society, which means to "seek the truth" from the SL texts and to "attaining utility" by means of the translation. Meanwhile, the translator’s social background affects the degree of his utility attaining behavior. Putting it under "Truth-seeking-Utility-attaining" Evaluative Model of Continuum based on the translator behavior, we can conclude that a translator’s behavior may slant towards the author/the SL texts, or the target reader/the target society, with the state of gradual changes in between.By analyzing Cheng’s version, we found out that her behavior belonged to the latter. Her "Utility-attaining" translation was especially manifested in her processing of language features. We can also find out that all these efforts centered the translator’s "Utility-attaining" aim.The conclusion of this thesis is:a translator’s responsibility doesn’t only lie in his/her faithfulness to the original, but also lies in the clear understanding of the complexity of the translation behavior, which presupposes the sociality of translation activity. During the process, the translator may be influenced by different social constraints, which control the degree of his utility attaining behavior. Translation is a joint kind of historical, social and cultural activity. So from this sense, every translation is branded with certain characteristics of that time, as well as the translator’s personality, which can make the translation different from the source text both in forms and in contents. Chinese American works possess special cultural and literature implications, which sometimes are familiar to the TL readers. As a result, translators decide the degree of "Truth-seeking" and "Utility-attaining" according to certain factors of TL market, for example, the aesthetical needs of TL readers. Translation critics should give reasonable analysis towards translator "Utility-attaining" behavior.This thesis consists of five parts:Chapter one is an introduction to the author and the work, the research purpose and the problems to be solved.Chapter two is literature review, which gives a brief introduction to the related studies on the Chinese versions of The Joy Luck Club.Chapter three is about the theoretical framework, reviewing on the paradigmatic shift from prescriptive to descriptive translation studies, with the focus on the latter. Besides, the author intends to elaborate the dialectics of Professor Zhou Lingshun’s Truth-seeking-Utility-attaining" Evaluative Model of Continuum based on the translator behavior within the framework of descriptive studies.In chapter four, Cheng’s "Utility-attaining" translation behavior is described from her processing of language features, including the processing of pinyin, Chenglish sentence groups, dialect and slang. The motivations of the translator’s behavior are also given in this chapter.Chapter five is the conclusion, pointing out the limitations of the thesis and the prospects of future study. |
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