A Comparative Study On Two English Versions Of Fu Sheng Liu Ji From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

Being a high-level autobiographical prose,Fu Sheng Liu Ji enjoys worldwide fame and turns out to be one of the best proses in depicting love between husband and wife and expressing personal ambitions in Qing Dynasty.Its terse,dedicate and sincere language provides a vivid description of daily life of the couple and Shen's taste in gardening,literary criticism as well as traveling experience.Moved by the love story between Shen Fu and Chen Yun,language master,translator Lin Yutang was the first to translate it into English entitled as Six Chapters of a Floating Life.His deft command of both English and Chinese justified his translation,making it the most frequently studied English version among all the translated works of Fu Sheng Liu Ji.Canadian sinologist Graham Sanders is interested in Chinese and devotes himself in studying classical Chinese culture.He was attracted by Fu Sheng Liu Ji.Thus nearly 80 years after Lin's translation,Sanders published his new edition as Six Records of a Life Adrift.It was welcomed abroad but relatively few researches are carried out concerning this edition in China.After collecting material,the author notices that relatively few researches are about the comparative studies of Lin's version and Sanders' version.Some examine from domestication and foreignization strategies applied in translation,polysystem theory or skopos theory.No one studied from the perspective of rewriting theory.Therefore,this thesis comparatively analyzes the differences and similarities in translation from the rewriting theory.Rewriting theory by Lefevere focuses on cultural influence on translation,an important breakthrough from the previous theories,most of which laid too much emphasis on linguistic equivalence.This theory offers an innovative perspective to examine translation processes.It holds that translator will rewrite the source text to some extent in an attempt to satisfy the needs of target language in aspects as ideology,poetics and patronage.This thesis intends to analyze the above mentioned two English versions of Fu Sheng Liu Ji from the perspective of rewriting theory.The author does not aim to choose the better version,but wishes to examine the influence of ideology,patronage and poetics and try to bring forward some suggestions on translating Chinese works into foreign languages.After analyzing,the author finds out they are both indeed influenced by the ideology and poetics:Lin's personal appreciation of leisure life and his love for Yun together with westerners' desire for Chinese culture push him to translate the prose.He prefers foreignization and tries to maintain original language style during the process.Sanders lives in modern world who could feel the quick development of China.To satisfy westerners' curiosity towards Chinese thoughts,Sanders translated the prose.He though also adopts foreignization,adds abundant annotations to render the translation into more colloquial style to make it easier to be accepted by westerners who live in such a quick-paced lifestyle nowadays.As patronages give them much autonomy,this factor does not exhibit two much difference.Therefore,the author holds rewriting theory offers a new perspective to the analysis of traditional Chinese works like Fu Sheng Liu Ji.Modern translators could apply rewriting theory by considering the need of both target and source readers when introducing Chinese literary works to the world in an effort to arouse their interest and further promote Chinese culture.