A Study Of Translation Strategies In Yan Lianke's Novel Lenin's Kisses

Shouhuo(??in Chinese),a rambling fictional masterpiece written by contemporary Chinese writer Yan Lianke,has captured the interest of a wide readership since its Chinese version came out in 2004.The novel satirically and magically casts a beady eye on contemporary China.In 2012,the English version entitled Lenin's Kisses translated by American sinologist Carlos Rojas is published by the New York-based Grove Press.The book has caused a stir in English-speaking countries with some 40 book reviews published.However,the existing studies on Shouhuo in English translation are still far from satisfactory,especially because they have applied rather old theories,including Skopos theory,Eugene Nida's dynamic equivalence theory and the strategies of domestication and foreignization,etc.The literature review included in this thesis also indicates that so far few efforts have been made to examine Lenin's Kisses from the perspective of Gideon Toury's initial norm theory focusing on the translator's basic choice of translation strategies during the decision-making process.Therefore,adopting Gideon Toury's initial norm theory and Javier Franco Aixelá's taxonomy of translation strategies for treating culture-specific items,this thesis aims to examine the translator's overall tendency in employing translation strategies and his decision-making process combining both statistical and qualitative analysis.A statistical analysis by means of manual counting was conducted based on the data of 100 words and 100 phrases randomly selected from the Chinese text of Shouhuo and their corresponding English versions.The results of the statistical analysis show that the translator tries to strike a balance between adequacy-oriented translation and acceptability-oriented translation,the former(53%)a little far outnumbering the latter(47%)by 6%,though more often the translator attempts to preserve the cultural significance and strangeness of the Chinese text.The textual analysis with reference to thirty-two examples indicates that nine translation strategies are frequently employed by Carlos Rojas when translating Yan Lianke's novel.Among the strategies employed to pursue adequacy,linguistic or non-cultural translation is the most commonly used.Meanwhile,the translator also prefers to employ linguistic translation plus gloss,mainly to deal with the “further reading” or“further further reading” in the original text.That is,the gloss is frequently used to give further explanation to Chinese culture or local culture-specific items,including dialect,person and place names,idioms,proverbs and aphorisms,time-specific jargon and slogans,etc.Besides,both “creative translation” as is defined by the author of this thesis and transliteration contribute to preserving the cultural significance and strangeness of the Chinese text.On the other hand,absolute universalization and naturalization are most frequently employed to pursue acceptability.Meanwhile,the translator resorts to deletion where he decides that the original items are either too obscure or repetitive and consequently it does not pay to transfer them to the English version.Finally,attenuation and relocation are occasionally employed to make the English text more acceptable and readable to target readers.The success of Lenin's Kisses in the Anglophone world is testified to by the critical acclaim it has received.Carlos Rojas' s translation contributes to its successful circulation and reception.His use of flexible and resourceful strategies in Lenin's Kisses has implications for translators of contemporary Chinese literature into foreign-language in terms of choosing proper translation strategies so that the translation can reach a wider readership.The author suggests that more scholarly efforts should be made to examine the process of the translation's production and reception from a sociological perspective.