On Hanan’s Translation Of Shi Er Lou: A Perspective Of The Translator’s Subjectivity

Li Yu (1611-1680) is an ancient Chinese master of popular literature, in particular of stories and plays. Shi Er Lou is his most important and representative collection of vernacular short stories. Patrick Hanan (1927-2014), a professor of Harvard University, is one of the most accomplished scholars in the US who study classical Chinese novels. Scholars from the West and China have carried out relatively extensive research into Li Yu and his Chinese works while they have conducted little research on the English translation of Li Yu’s vernacular stories, let alone the study on Hanan’s translation of Li Yu’s stories. Consequently there are gaps in the study of this area and more attention needs to be paid on it. To meet this challenge, this thesis intends to have a deep and systematic research into Hanan’s translation of Shi Er Lou.This thesis studies Hanan’s translation of Shi Er Lou from the perspective of the translator’s subjectivity. Extensive reading and intensive reading are applied to carry out this research. Also, a comparative reading is used for the study of the original text and the translation one. Research materials are collected from the libraries of Zhejiang Normal University and Shanghai International Studies University.The translator’s subjectivity, presented in the process of translation, has two features:initiative and passivity. The translator’s subjective initiative is manifested in social and cultural consciousness, translation purposes, personal interest, personal knowledge, personal linguistic competence and personality, and the passivity is influenced by objective constraints such as cultural and social environments, the intention of the author of the source text, the prospected reception of the target readers and differences of two languages. In the process of translation, the translator needs not only to develop his/her initiative and creativity, but also to take objective constraints into consideration.This thesis investigates Hanan’s subjectivity in the selection of Shi Er Lou and the reproduction of it. In selecting the original, Hanan was influenced by social and cultural environments:a re-translation era of the Chinese novels written in the Qing dynasty; the popularity of Li Yu’s works in the West; the support of the re-translation activity from the Chinese government and Columbia University Press. Besides the external influences, it maintains that internal subjective factor—personal interest plays a more decisive role. Shi Er Lou is Li Yu’s representative work and is a masterpiece of Chinese vernacular collection of short stories. Hanan had a particular interest in Li Yu and Chinese vernacular short stories and naturally, he selected Shi Er Lou. In addition, Hanan didn’t translate all the twelve stories but selected six ones because he believed that the whole collection was not intimately connected. In the process of reproduction, Hanan worked out his translation strategy based on his social and cultural consciousness. His translation strategy was that he considered both the Chinese culture and the English culture and presented both Li Yu’s intention and the prospected reception of English readers. Then, he gave full play to his subjectivity to defend his strategy. Hanan’s translation task was completed, thanks to his knowledge of the Chinese culture and the English culture, his good command of the Chinese language and the English language, his expertise in the study of Li Yu and the vernacular short stories and his patience and persistence with the task. Hanan’s translation strategy was embodied in his translation methods.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One introduces the research background and significance, the research content, the research methodology and the thesis structure. Chapter Two is the literature review, briefly introducing Patrick Hanan, English translations of Shi Er Lou and previous research on them and the translator’s subjectivity. Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the main bodies of this thesis. Chapter Three looks into Hanan’s subjectivity in selecting Shi Er Lou, namely, a trend for re-translating and Hanan’s interest in Chinese vernacular short stories and Li Yu. Besides, it studies Hanan’s subjectivity in selecting these six stories of Shi Er Lou. Chapter Four looks into Hanan’s subjectivity in reproduction of Shi Er Lou. It puts forward his translation strategy which guides his choice of translation methods. Then, it summarizes Hanan’s translation methods which consist of two parts: closeness to the original and optimization of linguistic, literary and cultural features in target language version. The first part is discussed from lexical level, syntactic level, and textual level; the second part is studied from linguistic level, literary level and cultural level. Chapter Five summarizes the significance and implications of Hanan’s translation of Shi Er Lou. It maintains that the translation of Shi Er Lou reflects the translator’s subjectivity. Also, it brings forward the methodology of the translation of Shi Er Lou for the translation of Chinese classics. Chapter Six concludes with a summary of the major findings of this thesis, limitations of this study and suggestions for further study.