A Comparative Study On Three Chinese Versions Of To Kill A Mockingbird From Stylistic Perspective

The study of stylistic translation in literary works has been a controversial issue.The focus of this dispute is whether the original stylistic is translatable.Some scholars think that style can be totally translated,while others treat it to be completed partly or absolute not.Translation stylistic transition theory inclines to be subjective and impressive short of systematical and scientific theory.But since 1960,stylistic translation has been provided with a horizontal view with the development of linguistic and stylistic.Under the influence,Professor Liu Miqing put forward stylistic markers theory,which mainly explores two aspects of stylistic markers.The first one is the recognition of the original work's stylistic markers.He thinks that style can be recognized by stylistic markers which can be divided into two categories: formal and non-formal markers,marking the importance of formal markers and attaching much weight on non-formal markers.Consideration must be given to both the formal markers and non-formal markers.The second one is the adaptability of the translation to the original text.Comparing with the linguistic view,Stylistic Markers Theory studies two aspects: the micro level of language and the macro level.The author of this thesis holds that although it is difficult to completely reconstruct the original style because there are great differences between language structures and cultures in Chinese and English,to some extent,it can be reconstructed.To Kill a Mockingbird,written by Harper Lee,an American Southern writer,adopts plain language and is full of rich cultural features.In terms of writing style,this novel is narrated from explicit children's perspective and implicit adults' perspective,applying a lot of figures of speech such as humor,personification,and irony to reveal the deep-rooted racial discrimination and prejudice,rigid caste system,gender discrimination and moral issues.For language style,the writer is expert in creating the details and character features by simple language to represent her thought towards the society.Until now,it has been translated into about forty languages.According to the author's statistic,there are eight Chinese versions in China,but there are few research on the Chinese versions.Therefore,the author selects Shu Xun's,Gao Hongmei and Li Yuchao's translated version as materials,which is based on the Liu Miqing's stylistic markers theory,to analyze formal and non-formal markers in To Kill a Mockingbird by the methods of description,comparison,quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis,and to test whether original formal markers get an effective reconstruction by analyzing typical examples in this novel.This study is helpful to understand original style for the translators and readers.After exploring stylistic markers in To Kill a Mockingbird,the author found that the three translators try to convey the original style by various translated strategies.For the reconstruction of style,three translators adopt adding and free translation to reconstruct original style in the aspect of phonological markers.There are differences in the degree of reconstruction,but they all reveal the original style.For lexical markers they convey original style by literal translation,free translation,omitting,transliterating,interpretating and adding footnotes.Syntactic markers and markers of figure of speech are reconstructed by applying literal translation,free translation and restituting.There are two requirements of a work's stylistic translation.The first one is that the translator should have a deep understanding of the writer's writing style.The second one is translated strategies the translators adopt to reconstruct the original style.There exists individual translation strategies among the three translators in the process of reconstructing original style because of the various cultural background among the three translators.In terms of overall reconstruction of style,however,the three translators' translated methods are consistent,which to some extent illustrate that style is translatable.Through the comparative study of the three translated versions,there will be some enlightenment functions for the further stylistic studies and translated versions' appreciation.