A Critical Study Of The Dent-youngs' Translation Of Shui Hu Zhuan From The Perspective Of Rewriting

Shui Hu Zhuan,one of China's classic novels,is known for its vivid stories,distinctive characters and lively language.It is not only praised in China,but also welcomed by the whole world.People early began its translation activities.So far,it has been translated into more than fifteen languages,producing more than fifty versions.Of them,The Marshes of Mount Liang translated by John and Alex Dent-Young in eight years(1994-2002),is the newest one.Different from others,the translation was further divided into five volumes;and it is the only 120-chapter version among all English translations.Yet until now,it has drawn little attention,and there has been little research on it.Even in the research,the methods and perspectives adopted by the researchers are not satisfying.In view of that,based on previous results,the author is to do a critical study of the translation from the perspective of rewriting.On the one hand,it will enrich related research and enlarge research scope of the Dent-Youngs' translation;on the other hand,it will offer useful references to contrastive analysis of Chinese and English,translation studies and Chinese to English translation activities."Rewriting" is an important concept proposed by Lefevere in "cultural turn".He pointed out translation is one form of rewriting.He thought translation is not just a language transfer between two languages.Moreover,it is influenced and controlled by other factors,such as social ideology,poetics and patronage.When reading the Dent-Youngs' translation,it is easy for us to find that the source text was rewritten by Dent-Youngs from different aspects.Based on previous research,cognition of the source text and analysis of the Dent-Youngs' translation,the rewriting is explained and summarized from three dimensions in the paper.On linguistic dimension,rewriting mainly exist in lexical level and syntactic level.At lexical level,rewriting includes the change of word colour and the use of superordinates.At syntactic level,over-translation and adjustment of sentence order are two kinds of rewriting.On cultural dimension,Dent-Youngs adopted the methods of target culture-centeredness and communication-orientedness to do rewriting.On stylistic dimension,firstly the translators broke the original form and divided the novel into five volumes.In addition,they did rearrangement and reconstruction for captions.Secondly,Dent-Youngs rewrote dialogues.One is to shift addressee,and the other is to change direct speech to indirect speech.Through analysis,we find the Dent-Youngs' translation shows no respect to the source text.The aims of the above rewritings are to cater for target language's poetics and intended readers.Translated in this way,the translation is more readable and acceptable,but it undoubtedly represses Chinese linguistic feature and Chinese culture.Even some contents of the novel are distorted.In this sense,it is against what we want from translation activities.It is also harmful to promote Chinese and Chinese culture.For this reason,we are critical to the Dent-Youngs' rewriting.We should take it as a warning in the following translation activities.The paper consists of seven chapters.The first chapter is introduction.It introduces the research's background and significance,and the paper's structure;the second chapter is literature review,including three parts:Shui Hu Zhuan and its English translations,The Marshes of Mount Liang and studies thereon,and Lefevere's rewriting;the third to fifth chapter are descriptions and analysis of rewriting from linguistic,cultural and stylistic dimensions;the sixth chapter is used to explain the backwash of the Dent-Youngs' rewriting and its implications;the seventh chapter is conclusion.It points out the study's findings and limitations,and then proposes the follow-up ideas for the study.