On Three Chinese Translations Of The Old Man And The Sea From The Perspective Of Cultural Context

Hemingway wrote the novelette The Old Man and the Sea in1952which receivedgreat reputation by Chinese readers since it was introduced into China in the1950s. EileenChang and Yu Guangzhong are well-known writers and poets. Although their identities oftranslators have been recognized recently, the researches of their translations still seemsuperficial. Most of them concentrate on scratching up their translations, and analyzing thefeatures of expressions. But few studies can be found from the perspective of culturalcontext.This thesis adopts Chang’s and Yu’s translations of The Old Man and the Sea in1950s as objects, and employs the version of Yu published in2010as the reference ofcomparison. These objective conditions that the translations are created by differenttranslators in the same historical time and the translations created by one translator but arefrom different time provide the feasibility for further study. Based on Professor Peng’stime-space context, it aims to make a comparison study of the translations from theperspective of cultural context.The thesis focuses on two aspects (temporal context and spatial context) and fivepoints (synchronic dialogue, diachronic dialogue, natural space, social space, andpsychological space) appending many examples to analyze the influence of culturalcontext on translation. This thesis adopts a target-oriented descriptive approach to analyzethe background of this thesis including research background, objectives, significance,literature review of previous studies of The Old Man and the Sea, and the time-spacecontext theory. Moreover, it also analyzes the influence of synchronic dialogue anddiachronic dialogue on Chang’s and Yu’s translations and the influence of natural space,social space and psychological space embodied in the two versions.This thesis can come to a conclusion from the perspective of temporal context:Translators’ life experiences, writing style and translating style impact on the translationprocedure. From the analysis of synchronic dialogue, if translators lived in the same historical period, their translation styles have in common. As for the diachronic dialogue,the translations of the same translator from different historical period can be different.Analyzing the translations with cultural context, it is easy to make a conclusion that thetranslation styles and translation strategies are affected by the cultural factors of temporaland special context. This study tries to provide a new perspective to explore thedisposition of cultural elements and translation strategies in the procedure of translationand hopes that the two translators’works can be fully recognized by more people.