A Study On Communicative Effect Of The Song Of Everlasting Sorrow—From The Perspective Of Translation Communication Theory

Wang Anyi is one of the most well-known writers in contemporary China.Chang Hen Ge,as one of her representative works,has been highly praised ever since its publication,which has won the World Chinese Literature Prize and the fifth Mao Dun Literary Prize.Its English version The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,accomplished in 2008 by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan,also immediately got successful response in western countries from both mainstream media and common readers.This success is largely owing to the translators' close attention to reaction and needs of target language readers in today's people-oriented society by taking corresponding measures in translating this book,which has resulted in its favorable communicative effect.This research,based on translation communication theory,assisted by Chinese-English parallel corpus of Chang Hen Ge,has adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct a systematic research on communicative effect of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow.After giving a literature review on previous studies on the translation of Mao Dun Literary Prize works and the translation of Chang Hen Ge,we introduced translation communication theory as theoretical framework,especially explaining two principles which influence the communicative effect.Then,based on software tests and target readers' response,the paper evaluated the communicative effect of the English version from the perspectives of readability and acceptability.Finally,through analyzing translation methods based on large numbers of examples,we discussed how this English version has achieved its good communicative effect by conforming to two principles of readability and acceptability.As the research results show,The Song of Everlasting Sorrow possesses a good communicative effect because it has a decent readability and acceptability.Its readability is mainly embodied through the explicitation of personal pronouns,the explicitation of connective elements and the strengthening of adverb of degree.Its acceptability is mainly reflected through domesticated translation of idioms,changes in language organization,and changes in narrative tense.This research not only expands the researches on The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,but also promotes the understanding of the translation for the western readers.What's more,the investigation on the specific methods in the translation could provide some practical references for the output of Chinese contemporary literary works.