A Comparative Study In Style Translation Of The Old Man And The Sea From The Perspective Of Steiner's Hermeneutic Motion Theory

Style stands for the soul of a literary work and the translation of a literary work largely depends on the translation of style.The Old Man and the Sea,as Hemingway's representative work,is awarded Nobel Prize for its unique style.Many translators have been devoted to reproducing its style.Eileen Chang,a well known Chinese female writer,also translated many works.Her translation of The Old Man and the Sea is acknowledged as the first Chinese version.Wu Lao is an experienced translator who has worked for many years in translating Hemingway's works.His translation of The Old Man and the Sea has enjoyed great popularity since its publication.The author of this thesis chooses the above two versions to explore their translation of style.In 1970 s,George Steiner put forward Hermeneutic Motion theory.This theory introduces four translation steps: trust,aggression,incorporation and compensation,which has a great significance in translation study.Under the framework of the four steps of the theory,by taking Eileen Chang's and Wu Lao's version as study objects,the author employs qualitative method to compare the two translators' style translation.This thesis attempts to study the following questions: first,how to analyze style translation from the perspective of Hermeneutic Motion theory;second,based on the above analysis,what similarities and differences exist in the two versions in terms of style translation.It is found that two translators have strong stylistic competence,and speak highly of the original style.Thus they both have invested their trust into the source text.However,when it comes to the understanding of the style of source text,Eileen Chang mostly understands from a feminine perspective,which means she is aggressive in understanding the style of source text.In translation,she adopts many female words which,to some extent,weakens the original “unyielding” spirit;on the contrary,Wu Lao adds positive words to strengthen the “unyielding” spirit.After the comparison of the two versions' style translation at lexical,syntactical and contextual level,it is found that in the stage of incorporation and compensation,two translators combine domestication and foreignization methodologies.However,they have different preference towards the two methodologies.Eileen Chang prefers foreignization and literal translation,while Wu Lao prefers domestication and free translation.In general,Wu Lao's version is closer to the style of the source text.Through a comparative study of style translation based on two Chinese versions of The Old Man and the Sea under the framework of Hermeneutic Motion theory,the thesis is intended to explore the applicability of Hermeneutic Motion theory in the study of style translation and attempts to find out the similarities and differences between the two Chinese versions.With the Hermeneutic Motion theory applied in this research,this thesis can,to some extent,expand the application range of the theory and deepen the study of style translation.Thus this thesis has some referential significance.Besides,the stylistic differences embodied in the two versions can provide some guidance for translators to correctly understand and properly reproduce the style of a literary work.