A Study On The Translation Of Judge Dee Mysteries From The Perspective Of Translation Variation Theory

Judge Dee Mysteries,on the basis of ancient Chinese judiciary stories of the Tang Dynasty,is a series of great detective novels created in English by the Dutch sinologist,Robert Hans van Gulik(1910-1967).It has received warm welcome of the western readers as well as the high evaluations of domestic and overseas scholars since it was published.Its Chinese version,mainly translated by Chen Laiyuan and Hu Ming and first published in 1986,has been widely sold for more than 30 years.Owing to the exquisite translation skills as well as the topping literature quality,most readers could never imagine that at one time that the novel,totally full of the descriptions of case explorations of ancient Chinese character,was produced by a foreigner.Through a comparative analysis between the source text and the translated text,it can be found that its Chinese version is not the absolute faithful translation based on the traditional translation thoughts.Instead,it is free translation giving special consideration to the readers;sometimes there are even rewriting and recreations of the plot as well as the dialogues of the characters,which are in coincidence with the translation variation theory put forward by Professor Huang Zhonglian.In this sense,the translation should be classified into the type of translation variation instead of complete translation.Based on the descriptive translation approach and combined with the case analysis,this thesis aims to resolve the following questions: In order to satisfy the special needs of the specific readers,how do the translators deal with the translated text by applying the translation variation means into use? What are these variation means? What are the reasons for the translators to do so? Is there an acceptance of the readership in ideology? What is the value of the translation theory? How shall we evaluate this success?It is argued that the text of Judge Dee Mysteries translated by Chen Laiyuan and Hu Ming belongs to translation variation,employing mainly the means of addition,deletion,writing,imitation and adaptation.There are three reasons that the translators adopt these means: the first one is the personal pursuits of the translators themselves;the second is to adapt to the language,culture as well as ideology of the target language;the third is to satisfy the reader's expectation.