A Metonymic Perspective On English Translation Of Dialectal Expressions

Jia Pingwa,a native writer of Shaanxi,is well-known for his realistic style in capturing the urban life and the mood of the early years just after the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the use of Shaanxi dialects is often to be seen in his works.Jia Pingwa's reputation for literature is far and wide in China and is regarded as one of the earliest writers to be introduced to the western world.However,the influence of his works is not that far in the western world.Among all the barriers in the way of introduction of his works,the difficulty of how to translate abundant Shaanxi dialectal expressions is the one unable to be overlooked.On the one hand,embedded with profound connotations and deep cultural factors,the translation of dialects often annoys the translator.As a result,translation practices of dialects are rare.On the other hand,theoretically speaking,the study on dialect translation is still such a relatively less discussed topic in China that only a few scholars have set their foot on.Therefore,dialect translation cries for more attention both in translation practices and theoretical studies.In 2016,the English version of Jia Pingwa's Feidu,Ruined City,came out,with Howard Goldblatt as the translator,long after its French version has won the prize of Prix Femina in 1997.Feidu,the most controversial novel of Jia Pingwa,shows us a miniature of the defining spirit and mood of the time in the 1980s by describing "the four cultural xianren" in Xijing.The novel bounds with Shaanxi dialects and demonstrates a unique local flavor.The present study takes the Shaanxi dialects that appear in Feidu as the example and analyses its translation under the framework of metonymics of translation proposed by Maria Tymoczko.Tymoczko maintains that translation in nature is a process of metonymics in which the translator decides some parts or aspects of the original to be translated,thus all translations are partial translations.Furthermore,she calls forth the combination of linguistic approach from the microscope and the cultural approach from the macroscope in translation studies.Enlightened by this perspective,this thesis regards that the translating of dialect is a process of metonymic choices and it inevitably evokes metonymically the large literary and cultural contexts of the target language.The thesis is an exhaustive study on dialectal expressions used in Feidu.Based on Guanzhong Dialect Dictionary,97 Shaanxi dialectal expressions are found in the source text and their English translation are also retrieved.With these,an exhaustive database of dialectal expressions in Feidu and their translation are built.The analysis on English translation of Shaanxi dialectal expressions in Ruined City is conducted from two aspects:metonymic choices on textual level and extra-textual level.In textual analysis,the translator is inclined to use free translation,word-for-word translation,substitution,omission and transliteration in order to find a balance between the acceptability and the local flavor of original text.Howard Goldblatt uses free translation in a large scale with the privilege of semantic meaning,and he also makes some explanation and use colloquial words to achieve the same stylistic feature.With word-for-word translation,the translator makes great efforts to keep dialect feature literally,however,it fails to convey the cultural connotations behind it.The translator tends to use substitution to translate some unique foods in Shaanxi.Omission and transliteration are used when there are lexical gaps.Nevertheless,the loss in translation is inevitable,no matter what translation methods the translator may adopt,the translation of dialectal expressions is still a partial translation,which illustrates the metonymic nature of dialect translation.In extra-textual level,the study explores the extra-textual constraints that make dialect translation a metonymic process,and finds that the translation of dialectal expressions is largely dependent on ideology,poetics,the translator and nature of dialects.As a result,the translation of dialect is the refraction of the literary context and social context.This thesis is a tentative effort made on English translation of Chinese dialects using the theory of metonymics of translation.The study aims to make up the insufficiency of translating Chinese dialect and make some contributions to the"going-out" of Chinese literature.