A Study On The Defamiliarization In Two Chinese Versions Of Gulliver’s Travels

The Defamiliarization Theory is firstly proposed by Viktor Shklovsky, one of the representatives of Russian Formalism. As we all know, it is the “literariness” that makes literary work different from other works. And Viktor Shklovsky holds the view that it is just the fresh and fancy expression which is named by him as defamiliarization that contributes to the literariness of literary work. So, based on the profound importance of defamiliarization on literary works, especially its importance on highlighting the value of literary work, how the translator look upon and deal with the defamiliarization devices in the literary work becomes the key to the success of the translation. With the heat discussion and application of defamiliarization to various fields since it is proposed, it has also caught a lot of attentions in the translation circle. This theory is mainly studied in two ways: the first one regards defamiliarization as the target of translation; while the second one regards it as a strategy of translation. This thesis clings to the first way.Gulliver’s Travels is one of the representative works of the famous British writer Jonathan Swift. Since it is published, this work is greatly appreciated by people from all over the world and it still has profound status in the literary world until now. By using a lot of ironic techniques, Jonathan Swift creates four imaginary journeys in this novel. And he also deeply exposes the social realities of Britain at that time and presents his personal value standards and principles. The various translation versions of Gulliver’s Travels have also been widely appreciated by people from all over the world after the publication. For example, dozens of Chinese versions of this novel have been produced. Among these translations, different translators have their own focuses. For example, some versions focus on the original contents of the novel so that they provide a perfect reproduction of the four adventurous journeys for the readers; some versions strive to be faithful to the writing forms of the original work and perfectly reproduce the writing techniques; based on the understanding of the writing intention of the writer, some versions try to perfectly reproduce the ironic techniques so as to provide the readers a way of getting acquainted with the value of the English satirical novels; and some other versions pay much attention to the purpose of rewriting and recreation in order to arouse the interests of different kinds of readers. Although various studies about the translations of Gulliver’s Travels from different perspectives have been done by Chinese scholars, it is still rare from the perspective of Defamiliarization Theory.This thesis chooses two Chinese versions of Gulliver’s Travels as the research objects. They are respectively the version of Zhang Jian published by the People’s Literature Press in 1962 and the version of Sun Yu published by the Shanghai Translation Press in 2011. Specifically, the first version is produced for adult readers while the second one mainly serves the student readers. Based on the great influence of Defamiliarization Theory on literary work and literary translation, this thesis proposes a multilevel evaluation mode of defamiliarization in literary translation and analyzes the two Chinese versions from two levels of language and culture. And concrete analysis is done from four sub-levels of the lexical level, the syntactical level, the rhetorical level and the cultural level. It mainly focuses on if the two translators have mentioned the defamiliarization devices in this literary work; what strategy do they choose and what effect do they achieve in the process of translation. With the detailed analysis of the example sentences, this thesis safely draws the conclusion that both the scholars noticed the defamiliarization features in this literary work and provided great defamiliarized effects for the readers. However, there is still limitation in this research. For example, the question if there is any other sub-system can be added to the multilevel evaluation mode of defamiliarization still needs to be discussed. Therefore, the author hopes that translators would pay more attention to the defamiliarization devices in the original literary works and try their best to search for better techniques and strategies in the translation of literary works.