A Contrastive Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of Jennie Gerhardt

Jennie Gerhardt (1911) is one of the literary works by Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945), a famous American writer in the19th century. Since Jennie Gerhardt was introduced into China in the1930s by Fu Donghua, a lot of Chinese versions have come out, among which the versions of Fu Donghua and Pan Qingling are the most popular. Fu’s version shows inclination to domestication, with the characteristics of smooth writing, vivid language and readability. However, Pan’s version has distinctive features of foreignization, which meets the need of modern readers for the exotic culture. Why are two versions so different? What are the main factors affecting these two versions? How do these factors influence the two versions? Based on above questions, the author of this thesis tries to make comparative study of these two versions so as to explore the reasons.Taking Toury’s Translation Norms as the theoretical basis, this paper compares Jennie Gerhardt’s translation of Fu Donghua and Pan Qingling and discusses the factors which affect the formation of two versions. The comparative study has been divided into two aspects:one is from the perspective of Toury’s preliminary norm and initial norm, the other is from the perspective of operational norm. Different translation strategies that mainly cover domestication applied by Fu Doghua and foreignization applied by Pan Qingling can be discovered through a lot of examples from these two versions. In addition, choice of words and sentences as well as stylistic features can also reflect the different translation characteristics of Fu Doghua and Pan Qingling. After a comparative study of these two versions, we can draw a conclusion that objectively both versions are affected by different times and social backgrounds and ideologies in which translators live. In Fu Donghua’s time, when he began to translate Jennie Gerhardt around1930, it was an age of rapid change in Chinese history. As a realistic novel, Jennie Gerhardt was introduced to China to boost people’s enthusiasm of fighting against life and to make writers and translators known writing techniques of realistic novel. While in Pan Qingling’s time, under the stable political situations and prosperous economy, Jennie Gerhardt was introduced to China to meet the readers’eagerness for foreign literature. Subjectively the two versions are influenced by different personal experiences, education and translation thoughts of the two translators. Fu Donghua is more inclined to adopt domestication in translation while Pan Qingling is more likely to adopt foreignization in his translation. Therefore, both versions possess distinctive features. Finally, this thesis has made contribution to the theoretical research of translation field under Toury’s Translation Norms.