A Stylistic Analysis Of Two Chinese Versions Of David Copperfield

The thesis adopts literary stylistics to analyze and compare two newer Chinese versions of David Copperfield,one of the best novels of Charles Dickens renowned for its diverse syntactic structures and patterns,and a large variety of dialects and slang expressions.Under the guidance of the theory,the translation analysis is made at four levels,namely phonological,lexical,syntactic and discourse levels,which makes the analysis more scientific and objective.The two versions analyzed in the thesis are respectively translated by Zhuang Yichuan in 2004 and by Song Zhaolin in 2009.Both of them are widely accepted by readers while are never put together for comparison,so a detailed analysis of the two versions has its academic value.The conclusion of the thesis is as follows: first,it is of great necessity to apply literary stylistics to fictional translation and its analysis.Second,doing a research on Song Zhaolin’s version of David Copperfield indeed has academic value.It should be noted that the aim of this thesis is not to tell which translation is better since each one has their own advantages and disadvantages,but through the comparative study,the author does find out that Song is very much aware of reproducing the style of the original texts and retain the aesthetic value of the masterpiece.Considering the lack of attention on Song’s version in China,doing more research on his version is indeed worthwhile.Third,from the analysis of two Chinese versions of David Copperfield it can be concluded that translators can deal with style in literary works in roughly four ways: 1,reproduce style in the same way in which style is presented in the original English text,such as onomatopoeic words for onomatopoeic words and literary words for literary words;2,reproduce the style in a different way that is more natural and common in target language,for example,use oral phrases in target Chinese language to reproduce colloquialism in source English language caused by grammar mistakes;3,when a form of style in the original is truly untranslatable,create a new stylistic feature in translation to maintain aesthetic value,for example,create a parallel structure in Chinese so as to retain the aesthetic value brought about by alliteration in the original English text;4,although translators should try their best to reproduce style,regrets cannot be avoided,sometimes to make sure that a phrase or sentence make sense in translation versions,style has to be more or less sacrificed.