A Comparative Study Of Defamiliarization Degree In The Chinese Versions Of Missing Person

As the 2014 Nobel Prize winner, Modiano is one of the most popular writers in modern literary world. By using the art of memory, his novel brings readers back to the past when the common people's fate was closely related to the times. Although his novels have produced very strong or far-reaching impact, yet the relevant researches are relatively few. This thesis tries to compare two Chinese versions of his winning entry of Missing Person from the perspective of defamiliarization, so as to find out the degree of defamiliarization employed in two Chinese versions and their influence on readers.As a literary theory, defamiliarization was first put forward by Victor Shklovsky in 1917, and later became the core concept of Russian Formalism. Defamiliarization is aimed at further discussion about arts in our life, consequently to recover freshness given to readers and their recognition of new things once again.According to Russian Formalism, literariness is the essential feature of literary works, but the literariness of works can be revealed by defamiliarization. Since literature and literary translation are closely related to each other, so in the literary translation, the defamiliarization should be retained and reproduced so as to prolong readers' time of understanding artistic appreciation and finally bring readers the feeling of novelty experience.After the literature review, theoretical framework and Modiano and his works are introduced. By using the qualitative and quantitative analysis, this thesis will make a comparative study of two Chinese versions of Missing Person from the aspects of lexical level, syntactic level and rhetoric devices through defamiliarization devices. The research findings have shown that the two Chinese versions of Missing Person both have paid much attention to the use of defamiliarization, but Wang Wenrong's translation seems to be better than Xue Lihua's translation in keeping the proper degree of defamiliarization, Wang also does well in creatively applying this theory to his practical translation. Although his version reads a bit harder at first sight, yet it can enable readers to think deeply and give them the feeling of novelty.Besides, there is necessity and possibility of the application in maintaining and reproducing the defamiliarization in the translated text on the part of a translator. We can find many such successful cases provided by scholars and translators, which makes the translation vivid and true to life. Meanwhile, defamiliarization has its limitations. The author of this thesis has noticed it and also has made some suggestions. With the development of time, defamiliarization develops accordingly, which makes up for its shortcomings correspondingly. It is the author's hope that more translators and scholars will continue to improve and enrich this theory of defamiliarization.This thesis concludes that it is necessary and feasible for a translator to apply the defamiliarization theory to the literary translation, which will surely help a translator to seek faithfulness to the original text, fully convey the authentic information expressed through linguistic form by the writer in the source text and finally enable the readers to acquire the feeling of novelty experience through reading the translated text. However, the translator should be able to control the appropriate degree of defamiliarization in the process of translation. Otherwise, it may produce some negative effect on possible readers.