A Comparative Study Of Translator's Subjectivity:Two English Versions Of Ah Q Zheng Zhuan

Ah Q Zheng Zhuan is Lu Xun's representative work,it is also regarded as the cornerstone of modern Chinese literature and has great reputation and popularity in the world.The story happens in a small rural town and characterizes an image of Ah Q who is distinguished by “spiritual victory.” Ah Q Zheng Zhuan is a true portrayal of the morbid Chinese people and society around Revolution of 1911.The fiction has been translated into more than twenty foreign languages since it had been published in 1921 and it has been boosting the spread of Chinese literature and culture in the world.The thesis selects Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's and Julia Lovell's versions as research objects and adopts comparative research method to do study.In an attempt to find out the hidden reasons of differences,the author compares the two versions from the perspective of translator's subjectivity on macro and micro levels.In 1953,commissioned by Foreign Language Press,Yang Xianyi who was a famous translator and foreign literature research specialist,together with his wife Gladys Yang,translated Ah Q Zheng Zhuan into The True Story of Ah Q by the strategy of foreignization and method of literal translation.They are loyal to the source text,select words accurately,use a distinctive style of sentence structure and publicize outstanding Chinese culture to the foreign countries.Julia Lovell who was a famous British sinologist commissioned by the Penguin Books and then translated all Lu Xun's thirty-three fictions including Ah Q Zheng Zhuan in 2009.It is the first time that Lu Xun's stories are all translated and introduced to Western readers integrally.She adopts the strategy of domestication and method of free translation and demonstrates her subjectivity based on deep understanding of source text.Julia Lovell breaks through cultural differences between China and Western countries and helps Western readers have a better and deeper understanding of Chinese culture and China by choosing the words which are more easily understood by Western readers.By comparative analysis,it can be clearly revealed how the translator demonstrates his or her subjectivity in the process of translation.Furthermore,Ah Q Zheng Zhuan can still be chosen as the original text again and recorded in celebrated and authoritative Penguin Classics even eighty-eight years after its publication,it acts as a mirror of Chinese literature's great influence and status all over the world in the twenty-first century.