On The Inter-culture In The Chinese Translation Of Hamlet:a Perspective Of Rhetorical Devices

Shakespeare’s drama is a treasury of early modern English. It can be said that the success of these plays is credited to Shakespeare’s manipulation of figure of speeches. Hamlet is one of the masterpieces of Shakespeare and can be reckoned as the summit of all Shakespeare’s works. The rhetorical usages in Hamlet are the most distinguishing feature and the most important reason to attract the readers. This thesis discusses metaphor, pun, repetition and so forth. Through the analysis of different translators’ translation methods to these rhetorical devices, we can see their translating thoughts, spirits, and styles to Shakespeare’s works.Nowadays, one prospect of the Shakespeare’s language research is from the cultural perspective to study the Chinese versions of Shakespeare’s plays and explain, confirm, and amend relevant theories. Hermeneutics. is a kind of philosophical and ideological trend prevailing in the west in1960s. In its broad sense, it is a kind of theory for exploring, understanding, and interpreting the language meaning, which plays a solid foundation for the study of translator’s subjectivity. The inter-culture, reflected both in the understanding and expression of the source text, and in the selection of translation strategy and purpose, runs through the whole process of literature translation. This thesis treats the translation of the main rhetorical devices in Hamlet as the research object. From the perspective of inter-culture, by using descriptive method, the author tries to discover the translator’s ideology and subjectivity, and the translation activity constrained by historical and cultural environment, which are behind the translation versions. This thesis discovers that the inter-cultural consciousness is the basis of the translation of rhetorical devices. Furthermore, whether the original image is kept or not is not only affected by the external cultural environment, but also influenced by the translator’s inter-cultural concept. Besides, by comparing the Chinese versions of Tian Han, Liang Shiqiu, Zhu Shenghao, Bian Zhilin, and Sun Dayu, this thesis intends to resolve the inter-culture consciousness of each translator, to find out the translation characteristics, and puts forwards the following strategies for rhetoric translation: keeping the original cultural image, converting the original cultural image, deleting the original cultural image. This thesis provides the researches on the translating language of Shakespeare’s drama with a new viewpoint, combining the internal language factors with the external culture factors. By using the rhetorical language as representative and analyzing practical examples, this thesis attempts to find out the inter-culture behind the translating language, and hopes it can offer some reference for the future relevant studies.