Comparative Study On Translation Strategies Of Pride And Prejudice Under The Functionalist Approaches

The novel Pride and Prejudice written by Jane Austen,a famous British woman writer,is one of the most outstanding fictions of the 18th century and it is deeply favored by Chinese readers and translators.Due to the influence of the author's gender,growing environment,and time background,the novel presents a typical British middle class culture which is very different from Chinese culture.Foreign readers who are not familiar with the British society of 18th century will understand hardly that the humor and irony of the source text by shaping the characters through violation of social customs by the author.This also undoubtedly hindered the transmission of literary works.In the 1970s,functionalism emerged in Germany.Its kernel theory is skopos theory which holds that the purpose of translation determines its translation methods and strategies and then produces a functionally satisfactory translation.One of the most important factors in determining the purpose of translation is the recipient of the translation.The functionalist approach provides a new idea for literary translation criticism.For translators,the difficulty of literary translation is well known due to cultural differences and the purpose of literary translation may differ from period to period.In the process of translation,the translator needs to focus on the social environment and the humanistic environment at that time.According to the specific environment,the corresponding translating strategy should be selected to minimize the reading burden of the readers.Based on functionalist approach,this thesis selects the most famous translations of Mr.Wang Keyi and Mr.Sun Zhili.In the study of two Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice,the author found that for foreign literary works,the translator need to use translation strategies reasonably according to different requirements of target readers which can prevent reading disorder due to cultural differences.In the process of translation,Mr.Wang Keyi emphasized domestication and reverted to the idea that the translation should be better understood by readers.The translation should be closer to the target language.Mr.Sun Zhili emphasized foreignization,advocating the greatest degree of preservation of the cultural factors in the original works and successfully maintaining the exotic flavor and aesthetic taste of the original text.Different historical backgrounds,personal aesthetics,and ideologies make the translation styles of two schools very different.Wang Keyi emphasized domestication approach while Sun Zhili focused on foreignization.This thesis attempts to introduce the functionalist approach into literary translation with cultural differences.This thesis is divided into six chapters.The first chapter is about the research background,research questions.The second chapter introduces the research status of the functionalist approach and overview of translation studies on Pride and Prejudice.The third chapter introduces Pride and Prejudice and its author.The fourth chapter is about culture differences between the East and West.The fifth chapter is comparative study of translation strategies.The last chapter summarizes the main findings,the limitations and suggestions.Through a comparative analysis of translation strategies of two versions,this paper's conclusion is that adding,literal translation with annotation are applicable to literary translation with cultural differences;Domestication and foreignization are not completely separate as translation strategies.As a translator,only seeking the balance between domestication and foreignization and conveying foreignized ideology by using domesticated language can we achieve good results in practice.