A Study Of The Yangs' English Translation Of Chinese Parody In Lu Xun's Works From A Sociosemiotic Perspective

The thesis focuses on the study of the English translation of Chinese parody in Lu Xun's works from a sociosemiotic perspective.Lu Xun,as a literary giant crowned as the “founding father of modern Chinese fiction,” has left the whole world a considerable amount of treasure.His writing has long been known as sarcastic,concise and powerful.Of all his works,not only are his novels worthy of studying,his poems and essays also deserve more attention.From the 1920 s on,an increasing number of scholars have been dedicated to the translation course of his works.But it is rather pitiful that most of their translation deals with his novels or even just a certain article,and is barely involved in his poems and essays.It is not until the 1950 s when the version translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang comes out does the English translation of Lu Xun's works witness a significant breakthrough.Generally speaking,a new word,phrase or sentence coined according to specific context in order to achieve a humorous or sarcastic effect is called parody.It is an interesting linguistic phenomenon existing both in Chinese and in English.Parody,as a figure of speech frequently used in our daily life and also in Lu Xun's literary works,has been endowed with high research value.Through careful reading and minute analysis,the research has found that Lu Xun has a fairly prudent attitude towards parody.This rhetorical device is not randomly created for public sensation.Various forms of parody can be collected from his works;even an ordinary word,a common idiom or a well-known poem will catch the readers' eyes after being parodied.A thorough understanding of parody is of vital importance for grasping Lu Xun's ideas.However,due to the discrepancy between languages and cultures,parody translation has been posing an enormous challenge for various translators.Over the years,even though more and more researches on parody have been conducted,few of them touch upon its translation,especially when it comes to the English translation of Chinese parody and there's barely any guidance of a systematic theory.Sociosemiotics is a comprehensive discipline established on the basis of semiotics.Sociosemiotics suggests a combination of anthropology,semiotics,linguistics,and sociology.It considers that signs are strongly connected with society,and since language is a complicated sign system,the language study cannot be isolated from social factors.Translation is a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural activity;it is the transformation between two sign systems,during the process of which factors like context,register and culture will exert some impacts.In light of this,many scholars advocate applying sociosemiotics to translation studies.One of the representatives Eugene Nida puts forward the sociosemiotic approach to translation of which the core is semiotic meaning.It claims translation is translating meaning,including the referential meaning,the linguistic meaning and the pragmatic meaning of the text.Chen Hongwei proposes the criteria of sociosemiotic approach “correspondence in meaning and similarity in function,” providing effective guidance for translation practice.The thesis adopts a qualitative research method,and will be aimed at some typical parody examples in Lu Xun's works.The study chooses the English version translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang,attempting to make a detailed analysis from a sociosemiotic perspective of whether the Yangs' translation of parody has been faithful to the ST in both meaning and function.The thesis starts with a brief introduction of the research background,significance and objectives.The literature review section explains the definition and classifications of parody,and analyzes the study history and current situation of the translation of parody with a summary of the deficiencies of present studies.In the theoretical framework part,the author combs through the formation and development of sociosemiotics,followed by the illustration of the establishment of the sociosemiotic theory.Under the guidance of sociosemiotics,the research minutely discusses some specific parody examples taken from Lu Xun's works in terms of the reproduction of referential meaning,linguistic meaning and pragmatic meaning and their corresponding functions using the English version by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang.Through the study it can be found that the Yangs' translation has different performances in reproducing the several meanings and functions.When transferring referential meaning,the translators have noticed if the linguistic signs in the ST and the TT share the same referent.Their translation is not confined to its literal meaning,but rather makes flexible transformation between Chinese and English and thus accurately realizes the similarity of informative function;when transferring linguistic meaning,which is the most difficult to convey,the parodic poem as well as malapropism and pun in the ST cannot be successfully emulated,leading to the loss of aesthetic function and expressive function;when transferring pragmatic meaning,the translators pay close attention to the relation between signs and their interpretant and distinguish different meanings generated in certain contexts,managing to convey the implicit information the writer intends to express into the TT.Under most circumstances,there is no distinct borderline among these three types of meaning as they often appear overlapping with one another.This requires translators to have a thorough understanding of the ST and prioritize the most important meaning without neglecting other meanings in different texts in order to achieve the optimal equivalence of meanings and functions.The innovation and significance of this thesis: This thesis investigates the English translation of Chinese parody in Lu Xun's works under the guidance of sociosemiotic approach,compensating the lack of study in this field.Further,it provides a new perspective for the researches on the English translation of Lu Xun's works,which subsequent studies of parody can use for reference.Meanwhile,the inevitable shortcomings in the Yangs' translation can barely outweigh their contributions to the translation of Chinese parody.The multiple translation methods they have adopted serve as a great model for more translation practice in the future.