A Comparative Study Of Three English Versions Of The Peanut From The Perspective Of Readers’ Response Theory

Juxtaposed with poetry, novel and drama, prose is a kind of important literarygenres. It has the features of being diverse in topics, short in length, flexible inexpressions and rich in emotions. The prose has been deeply rooted in our country forthousands of years, and its achievements are not less than poetry composition.Modern Chinese prose, using modern vernacular Chinese, was born and grew duringthe May4th Movement period which coincided with the prosperity of all kinds ofrevolutionary thoughts. Based on its unique historical background, modern Chineseprose has other features: its language is concise and simple, it advocates the existenceof individuality and emphasizes the harmony of human, society and nature. ModernChinese prose has been praised as the treasure of Chinese culture. However, the studyof prose translation seems to be left far behind compared with prose creation, evenother literary translation. With the development of cross-cultural communication,Chinese culture has have a tremendous impact on the world, and the research ofmodern Chinese prose translation has attracted more and more attention. So far, lotsof scholars have been engaged in this field to carry on this research through differentperspectives and methods, which have made fruitful achievements.Nida is a distinguished linguist and translator. The core of his translation theoriesis functional equivalence. Nida regarded it as the closest natural equivalent to thesource-language message, which means that we should not regard translation as theprocess of looking for corresponding components in the surface structure. And therelationship between the target receptor and the target message should be substantiallythe same as that which existed between the original receptor and the original message.Based on this theory, Nida proposed readers’ response theory. It can be said thatreaders’ response theory is an important component of functional equivalence theory.Nida is the first one to authentically put the readers’ response into the translation criteria. Nida reckoned that to evaluate a translated text depends on the readers’response to it, that is to say, whether the target language readers can respond the sameas the original language readers. To some extent, the target language readers’ responseto a translated text is like doing a market research for testing the public response to aproduct. For a certain product, no matter how good it theoretically or how beautiful itis on display, if the public response isn’t good enough, it will not be accepted. Thissimile illustrates vividly that readers’ response theory can evaluate the translated textsand promote the quality of translation.Nowadays, readers’ response theory has been more and more applied into thetranslation of various literary genres, without exception for prose translation. Theauthor of this thesis offers three reasons to justify the feasibility of application ofreaders’ response theory to prose translation: Firstly, Nida once argued that in theprocess of translation meaning must be given priority, while form comes second. Thefirst distinctive feature of modern Chinese prose is “flexible in writing form butunited in spirit”, so its translation should also rarely focus on form, but stress theexpression of meaning, which is consistent with Nida’s translation theory. Secondly,Nida’s readers’ response theory pays much attention to the target language readers’response. The relationship between the target language readers and the target textsshould be substantially the same as that which existed between the original languagereaders and the original texts. Modern Chinese prose is a kind of flexible literarygenres, so it isn’t possible or necessary to be translated word-for-word. The main goalof a translated text of modern Chinese prose is fully understood by the target languagereaders so that they can have the same response as the original language readers. Itcan be seen that Nida’s translation theory and modern Chinese prose translation boththink highly of the target language readers’ response. Thirdly, Nida believedtranslation is communication. Translation plays an important role in cross-culturalcommunication. One of the aims of modern Chinese prose translation is to spreadChinese culture to the target language readers. Meanwhile, the target language readersof the modern Chinese prose are expected to have an understanding of Chineseculture by reading the translated texts of Chinese prose. It can be said that modern Chinese prose translation a kind of communication between the readers of twodifferent languages and cultures. Nida’s readers’ response theory, which pays muchattention to the corresponding response between the source language readers and thetarget language readers, can appropriately meet this requirement of communication.According to the above three reasons, the application of Nida’s readers’ responsetheory to prose translation is valid and feasible.This thesis tries to study the modern Chinese prose translation form theperspective of readers’ response theory by comparing three English versions of ThePeanut. The Peanut is a well-known essay written by Xu Dishan in1920s,characterized by simple and fluent language, short length and far-reaching implication.The three English versions of The Peanut are translated by Liu Shicong, ZhangPeijiand Yang Xianyi&Gladys Yang respectively. Through a comparative analysis ofthese three English versions from the lexical level, syntactic level and textual levelunder the framework of readers’ response theory, the author of this thesis proposesthat a good translated version should take the target language readers’ response andacceptability into consideration, try to overcome the cultural barriers, and strive tohelp the target language readers feel the same as the original language readers in orderto achieve cultural exchange and information transfer. These great translators appliedsome unique translation strategies and methods in the process of translation of ThePeanut so that the target language readers can get the same response as the originallanguage readers. According to these translation versions, the author of this thesissummarizes such C-E prose translation strategies and methods as literal translation,free translation, addition, omission, combination, division and reorganization, etc.In a word, the thesis attempts to provide a beneficial supplement for studyingmodern Chinese prose translation, that is, readers’ response. It has expounded thefeasibility and meaning of the application of readers’ response theory to prosetranslation research. And the comparison of the three versions of The Peanut revealsthat famous translators always take reader’s response and reader’s acceptability intoaccount when carrying out the translation task. In the process of modern Chineseprose translation, the translators should give top priority to the target language readers. Shouldering the responsibility of building language bridges between different cultures,the translators should select the translation strategies flexibly in order to meet therequirement of readers’ response theory. Hopefully, this thesis can shed some lighton guiding Chinese prose translation and give meaningful lessons to the future study.