| Luotuo Xiangzi is the masterpiece of Lao She, who is hailed as a "language master’" The book contains concise, colloquial expressions, rich lively sentence structures and unique humorous narration. Its five English versions provide abundant resources for study of translational style reproduction. Although many studies have been conducted concerning the English versions of Luotuo Xiangzi, such as those which mainly centered on Evan King’s and Shi Xiaojing’s versions and are mostly on the base of Leech and Short and Shen Dan’s theories, there is still room for improvement in studies about its style reproduction,This thesis represents an effort in this direction of research, which is founded on a theoretical framework from Liu Miqing’s markedness theory as well as those on Shen Dan’s, Leech and Short’s theories. Combining other scholars’related concepts, the author takes a comparative approach to the analysis on the original text, Lao She’s Luotuo Xiangzi and three of its English versions and explores the significance of style reproduction from multiple levels. This thesis intends to answer three questions, (a) How is style reproduced in the three versions of Luotuo Xiangzi, and to what extent? What are the techniques the translators use? (b) What are the suggestions for translators to improve style reproduction in translation? (c) What are the limitations of using stylistics and markedness theory to analyze style reproduction?The major findings of the thesis include:(a) The three versions basically reproduce the original style. Evan King adopts the method of recasting; Shi Xiaojing adopts the method of corresponding while Howard Goldblatt adopts a more flexible translation method, (b) The thesis offers two suggestions concerning style reproduction for translators. First, improving stylistic awareness by comprehending style from a holistic view and paying attention to recurring stylistic markers. Second, adopting flexible translation methods for different stylistic markers, (c) Limitations still remain with stylistics and especially markedness theory for studying style reproduction in translation. First, it does not facilitate the study of translation of culture-loaded utterances. Second, it is unable to analyze some factors of fiction translation in an objective way. Third, there is no reliable standard yet for discussing the effect of the stylistic markers.Through analysis of style of the original text and translations, the thesis helps to interpret the association between the content and the way to deliver the content in Luotuo Xiangzi, to enhance the awareness of overall thematic and artistic significance, and will provide further insights for style reproduction in fictional translation. |
PDF Full Text Request