The Analysis Of Translation Skills Of The Poetic Elements In The Straw House In Terms Of Rivalry Theory

Rivalry Theory was brought about in 1981 by Chinese translator Xu Yuanchong.After continuous enrichment and improvement,Rivalry Theory was concluded as “Art of beautification and innovation for rivalry”.This theory providestranslation criteria,translation skills andtranslation objectives for literary translation.The translation criteria is mainly for pursuing beautification;the translation skills are composed of literal translation,free translation,deletion,addition and “generalization,equalization and deepenization”;and the translation objectives include taking advantage of the source language,taking equal advantage of both source and target language,and taking advantage of the target language.Although there are some differences between Xu Yuanchong's idea and the Chinese traditional outlook on translation which is in pursuit of faithfulness,they are actually in dialectical unity.The important contribution of Rivalry Theory is its breakthrough for pursuing beautification on the basis of traditional translation theories,and ithas introduced an important theoretical precedence for literary translation.Caofangzi is a full length novel written for juveniles by Chinese writer Cao Wenxuan,a professor in Peking University who won theHans Christian Anderson Award in 2016.He toldstories in between the late 1950 s and the early 1960 s in southeastern China,where a boy Sang Sang spent his imprinted and unforgettable childhood.This novel created some na?ve children figuresand described,from multiple dimensions,a beautiful landscape in China's Jiangnan area,which has built upa poetic image forCaofangzi.In 2005,The Straw House,the English version of Caofangzi,translated jointly by Sylvia Yu,Julian Chen and Christopher Malone,was published.This thesis,from the perspective of Rivalry Theory(RT),analyzes the translation skills of the poetic elements in The Straw House.Based on the research methods of classification and case studies,the thesis is composed of three parts – the translation skills of children'sinnocent elements,the translation skills of aesthetic elements,and the translation skills of other unique elements.Firstly,it begins with the analysis of the translation skills of the children's innocent elements from four aspects,and they are appearance description,psychological description,action description and language description.Secondly,the thesis studies the translation skills of aesthetic elements in The Straw Housefromaesthetic theme,aesthetic sounds,aesthetic images and aesthetic narrations.Thirdly,it analyzes the translation skills of the other elements in this novel: reduplicated characters,appellations and nursery rhymes.At last,the significant guidance of RT to the beautiful poetic novel,Caofangzi,was confirmed,meanwhile,the translation skills worth learning from The Straw House,as well as the shortcomings in the process of translationin The Straw House and related suggestions were given.From this study,it was found,according to the criteria of RT for literary translation,that in the process of expressing the poetic elements in Caofangzi,some of the poetic elements were translated with the translation skills,reaching the translation objectivesin RT.Among them,some poetic elements were translated literally,reaching the translation objectives of takingeither advantage of target language or equal advantage of both source and target languagesin RT for literary translation;some poetic elements were translated freely,either taking advantage of source language or taking equal advantage of both source and target languagesof translation objective in RT;addition were used in the translation of poetic elements,reaching the translation objective of taking advantage of target language,and deletion were applied to take equal advantage of both source and target languages;“generalization,equalization and deepenization” were used in the translation of the poetic elements,reaching the translation objectives of taking advantage of the source language,taking advantage of equal advantage of both source and target languages,and taking advantage ofthe target language.Therefore,the original poetic elements were expressed effectivelyin The Straw House.However,some of the poetic elements were literally and blindly translated to express only the original contents,some were pretermission translations,and were mistranslated,leading to the loss of the poetic elements in the process of translation.Besides,the poetic elements were diverse and complexed,making the study limited in classification and statistics.This thesis objectively explores and analyzes the translation skills of the poetic elements in The Straw House,expecting to take advantage and avoid shortcomings in future translation practice and studies,or make new breakthroughs.