A Study Of The English Translation Of Li Yu's Wusheng Xi From The Perspective Of Thick Translation

Li Yu(1611-1680)is an outstanding man of letters in the history of Chinese literature.His first collection of vernacular short stories is Wusheng xi that is one of his representative works.Its literary value is highly acclaimed in the English world.Some stories in Wusheng xi have been translated into English.They have been listed as the required readings to study Chinese classic literature in the English world.Scholars at home and abroad have widely studied Li Yu and his works,however little research is carried out to study the English translations of his vernacular stories,let alone the study on the English translations of Wusheng xi.Consequently,the thesis studies the English translations of Wusheng xi from the perspective of thick translation to explore effective and good approaches of translating Chinese classics and spreading Chinese culture.Based on Gilbert Ryle's and Clifford Geertz's concepts of the thick description,Kwame Anthony Appiah puts forward the theory of thick translation.The thick translation,an academic translation,locates the translation in a rich linguistic and cultural context by adding annotations and accompanying glosses.Its purposes are to make meanings transparent and understandable and to preserve and interpret cultural elements.It provides a new perspective of translating Chinese classics and cultural elements.So far,there are only two abridged English translations of Wusheng xi,one translated by Patrick Hanan and the other by Xia Jianxin.Both of them are filled with typical characteristics of the thick translation.Consequently,the study adopts the research methods of descriptive research and comparative study to dig out the forms and characteristics of the thick translation in the two abridged English translations.The thesis finds that there are two forms of the thick translation in the English translations of Wusheng xi.One is peritextual interpreting outside the body text and the other is textual amplifying inside the body text.The specific forms of peritextual interpreting are prefacing,illustrating and footnoting that provide an amount of academic and explanatory material to introduce Li Yu,the features and structure of Wusheng xi and the situation of translating Li Yu's fictions into English and to thickly interpret some cultural elements in Wusheng xi.As for the thick translation as textual amplifying,its specific forms are linguistic compensation,literary explicitation and cultural addition.The linguistic compensation compensates for the deleted or unexpressed meanings in the original work to make meanings coherent and complete.The literary explicitation makes the hidden Li Yu's writing style-the narrator's voice and rhetoric devices-contrast,metaphor and quotation become explicit by adding words and displays literary features of Wuseng xi.The cultural addition adds explanatory material and implied meanings to interpret linguistic and cultural information of cultural-loaded words.In short,the translation strategy of the thick translation not only makes meanings transparent and understandable,but also preserves and interprets literary features and cultural elements in Wusheng xi.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter one introduces background of theresearch,significance of the research,methodology of the research and structure of the thesis.Chapter two is literature review,briefly introducing Li Yu,his works in the English world,Wusheng xi and its English translations,and the essence of the thick translation.Part three analyzes the forms and characteristics of the thick translation outside the body text.In chapter four,the thesis aims to dig out the forms and characteristics of the thick translation inside the body text.Chapter five is the conclusion.It gives major findings and implications,points out limitations and provides suggestions for future study.