| Mu Dan Ting, also known as Huan Hun Ji, was written by the famous dramatist Tang Xianzu in late Ming Dynasty. Published in1598A.D., it is one of the best plays in the Ming Dynasty, no matter seen from its ideology or artistic achievements. Mu Dan Ting distinguished itself with graceful and magnificent language, fair-sounding melody and the soul-stirring love story. It is not only appreciated by our Chinese people, but also has been introduced abroad since the17th century and is highly appreciated by the western people. Till now, Mu Dan Ting has been translated into more than ten languages and presented on the stage all over the world. However, since it is one of the classic dramas in China, it contains a lot of rhetoric and allusions, especially large quantity of metaphors. Therefore, few scholars have ever set foot in this area.This thesis classifies the metaphors selected from Mu Dan Ting into four main categories based on the analysis of the original text and conceptual metaphor theory. They are animal metaphors, plant metaphors, inanimate object metaphors and metaphors from historical or cultural figures. In accordance with the relevance theory by Sperber&Wilson, the thesis makes a contrastive analysis of metaphor translation of the two English versions by Cyril Birch and Wang Rongpei so as to explore metaphor translation in Chinese classic dramas. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, the thesis discovers that both Birch and Wang Rongpei combine direct translation and indirect translation in their versions. Direct translation includes literal translation, literal translation plus explanation, literal translation plus footnote, and indirect translation includes free translation, free translation plus explanation, substitution and omission. The differences lie in the proportion of the translation methods each translator adopted. Cyril Birch, aiming to maintain the elements of Chinese culture, tends to adopt direct translation, among which literal translation method takes about half the total. While Wang is prone to adopt indirect translation, among which free translation is his favorite. Generally speaking, in most cases, Birch’s translation cannot achieve optimal relevance but can maintain the original images. On the contrary, Wang’s translation can obtain optimal relevance in majority of the metaphor translations while some of the metaphor images are lost. The thesis suggests that free translation plus explanation or footnote can remedy the insufficiency of free translation and literal translation.The thesis consists of six chapters:Chapter One makes a brief introduction of the thesis, it introduces the purpose, research questions and significance of the present study.Chapter Two is the literature review. It mainly consists of three parts:the first part is the review of the relevance theory, the second part is the review of metaphor and the third part is the translation research of Mu Dan Ting.Chapter Three explains the research data and methodology of this thesis.Chapter Four is the main body of this thesis. It analyzes the four main categories metaphors translation in Birch’s and Wang’s versions and makes a contrastive analysis of the metaphor translation under the guidance of the relevance theory. The specific translation ways in each aspect are also explained at the same time.Chapter Five makes a summary of the translation methods adopted by the two translators when dealing with metaphors in Mu Dan Ting, and then summarizes the similarities and differences of the adoption of translation methods in the two English versions.Chapter Six, also the last part, is the conclusion of this thesis. Major findings and limitations of this thesis are presented.To sum up, the thesis discusses how to analyze and translate the metaphors in the Chinese classic drama Mu Dan Ting in the framework of relevance theory, so as to provide some research methods for the Chinese classic drama translation in the future. |
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