The Translation And Reception Of A Farewell To Arms In China

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), a famous American novelist in the 20th century. A Farewell to Arms, which is his early magnum opus, has been ranked as the crowning achievement of "the Lost Generation" for its particular connotation and unique artistic style. It is also a masterpiece in the history of Modern American Literature. This novel has likewise gained its fame in China. In this article, the author will explore and analyze the publishing, distribution, research and review of this novel since early 1930s on the basis of Medio-Translatology, which will give us a macroscopic view about the translation history and research status of this novel in China.This paper will be divided into three parts:The first part is about the translation and reception of this novel in China before 1976, the ending of the Cultural Revolution. This part can be subdivided into three periods:before the Anti-Japanese War, from the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War to the founding of New China, the rest is the third period.The second part is about the translation and reception of this novel since 1976. This part is also the key point of this paper. With the comprehensive development of socialist culture in this new period, foreign literary theories and critical discourse have been spread to China, the translation and reception of A Farewell to Arms has got mushroom development. Old versions have been reedited and more and more new versions have been published, the number of research papers has been multiplied, all of these have symbolized that the translation and research of this novel have got great progress. The author will organize this part from the following five aspects:characters, thoughts, artistic characteristics, translations about this novel and movie reviews concerned. Besides, the author will add relevant research done by American scholars in according sections, intending to make comparisons and explanations about their differences between China and America.In the last part, the author will analyze the translation and reception of this novel in China by using related translation theories. Even Zohar's Polysystem Theory and Andre Lefevere's Manipulation Theory will be applied to go deep into the factors affecting the translation and reception of this novel in certain periods from political, ideological, linguistic, literary and translational view, aiming at a more systematic research about the translation and reception of this novel from the aspect of culture. It is hoped that we will know more about how the complicated factors of the target system exert its influence on a certain translation work from this paper.On the whole, more and more research has been carried out on A Farewell to Arms after the Cultural Revolution from multi-dimensional perspective, which has extended this novel's research scope. Achievements should be affirmed, while problems should not be neglected. Different researchers do the similar study at home frequently, meanwhile, we can find that many Chinese papers imitate American research methods if we compare the research content and publish time. We need to add more depth and innovation to our research.