Lu Xun Literal Translation In Chinese Vocabulary Control And Acceptance

Lu Xun is not only Chinese greatest writer, thinker, revolutionist, but also a translator. During his lifetime,he translated3million words which come from the works of15countries and more than110writers. Lun Xun made up his mind to abandon medicine for literature. In Communication on Translation, Lun Xun said:"Chineselanguage or writing are really too sophisticated." Lu Xun persists the "to be faithful at the cost of fluency" translation method. However, many people criticize the method. They think that metaphrase will make language stiff and arouse misunderstanding, and even become a mistranslation. Therefore, many scholars are suspicious of Lu Xun’s method. But some other scholars pointed out that the literal translation of Lu Xun absorbed many foreign words,and promoted the development of Chinese vernacular movement.So there is a highly controversial topic on how to properly evaluate Lu Xun’s Literal Translation. The research on Lu Xun’s translation has a great significance tonot only the study of Lu Xun, but also the study of the formation of modern Chinese. This study mainly focuses on the comparison and acceptance of the Japanese and Chinese vocabulary and analyzes the literal words in Lu Xun’s translation of The Symbol of Depression and After Word to Out of the Ivory Tower. The two works are both translated in mid-1920s,which reflect Lu Xun’s translation style.He advocated literal translation in this period. So there are many literal words in the two works.In Metaphrase and literature’s class nature, Lu Xun pointed out:" Where there is no rigorous grammar, there is no clear thinking. In other words, if the grammar of Chinese language is not systematic, we can not think in a clear way. If we ever use language in a confused way, though it is fluent to read, what we get is only a confused idea. To solve this problem, in my opinion we have no choice but to suffer some hardship, to introduce different syntax from ancient language or foreign language, gradually integrating it into our own language."We can see that,Lu Xun wants to introduce foreign words to develop Chinese vocabulary.This is Lu Xun’s method and desire on translation. Have Lu Xun’s desire been achieved in modern China? In order to clarify this issue,this study compares the meanings of literal words and studies the acceptance in modern China. By comparing the literal meaning of modern vocabulary, we can not only understand the acceptance in modern Chinese,but also deepen the understanding of Lu Xun’s translation thoughts.There are altogether five chapters.Chapter One introduces research motivation, meaning, selection of texts and dictionaries,research methods,ect. Chapter Two introduces the study of Lu Xun,the study of The Symbol of Depression and After Word to Out of the Ivory Tower’s Chinese translation,the study of Lu Xun’s translation,the study of word exchanges between modern Chinese and Japanese, and summarizes the problems and deficiencies in prior studies.In Chapter Three,the author introduces The Symbol of Depression and After Word to Out of the Ivory Tower’s original content and the Chinese translation, and chooses the literal words in this research and selects literal words from two books.Then the author classifies and organizes the literal words and analyzes part of the words.Chapter Four is based on the data of Chapter Three,and analyzes the literal words’ acceptance in modern Chinese.Chapter Four also analyzes the mistranslation of Lu Xun’s translation.Chapter five is the conclusion.