A Study Of Three Chinese Versions Of Oscar Wilde’s "the Happy Prince" From The Perspective Of Translators’ Cultural Attitude

Translation is an ever-developing process.A same original text may have different translated versions in different periods of time.Apart from the cultural factor,the translators’ cultural attitude and the understanding of the original text as well as the attitude toward translation can also be factors.The different Chinese versions of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales “The Happy Prince” may provide a good sample to study the development of literary translation.This thesis adopts case study,analyzing three versions that respectively are Zhou Zuoren’s “Anle Wangzi”,Ba Jin’s “The Happy Prince” and Wang Lin’s “The Happy Prince”.They are all typical examples in different period of time.Zhou Zuoren’s “Anle Wangzi” is the first Chinese version.Due to the cultural context in the late Qing Dynasty and Zhou Zuoren’s individual cultural attitude,“Anle Wangzi” was translated in wenyan style with the content that was relatively new to people at that time.Ba Jin translated “The Happy Prince” during wartime.The vernacular movement as well as Ba Jin’s cultural attitude and his views on translation were all factors that influenced Ba Jin’s translation.Compared with Ba Jin’s translation,the language of Wang Lin’s version is more child-oriented and simple,which closely relate to the Chinese translators’ cultural attitude that translated literature ranks among Chinese literature nowadays and the development of modern Chinese language.This thesis puts the three versions into the cultural environment and through the synchronic analysis of the three versions and some diachronic comparison,it can be found that the translation of “The Happy Prince” transformed from an ideological tool to a prose full of artistic value and beauty.By analyzing the features of the three different Chinese version of “The Happy Prince”,it can be found that the translation process of it reflects the influence of cultural factor on literary translation and translators’ cultural attitude is also an important factor influencing translation through translators’ subjectivity.