A Study Of L�' Shuxiang’s Translation Thoughts In His Translated Version Of Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome, the masterpiece by Edith Wharton, has been widely acknowledged as one of the best tragic stories among the American writer’s works. There are several Chinese-translated versions of Ethan Frome, among which Mr. Lii Shuxiang’s version is the most popular one. Being an eminent linguist, Mr. Lii is also an outstanding translation practitioner, although he did not propose any translation theory. This research, based on Nida’s theory of functional equivalence, is conducted on Mr. Lu’s Chinese version of Ethan Frome from the perspective of meaning equivalence, style equivalence and cultural equivalence. Various excellent examples are analyzed and appreciated to reveal his translation style and techniques in his version, which has been viewed to be faithful and expressive, popular and easy to understand, and fluent and natural. It is known that Nida’s theory of functional equivalence emerged in the 1960s, while Mr. Lu’s translated version came into being in the 1940s, which precedes about 20 years earlier than Nida’s work. But Mr. Lu’s translation practice embodies fully Nida’s translation theory, from which we can see Mr. Lii’s advanced translation thought, and therefore his version has the extremely high research value.The significance of this study is that we can appreciate Mr. Lu’s translation style by analyzing his Chinese version of Ethan Frome. Certainly, it is an unshirkable duty for translators to produce popular works by means of weakening excessive Europeanized Chinese versions.