A Comparative Study Of Two English Versions Of Bian Cheng From The Perspective Of Literary Stylistics

Bian Cheng is the representative work of Shen Congwen.It was selected as one of the top 100 Chinese novels in the 20^thcentury.The language beauty of the novel which is mainly shown in a large number of overlapping words,rhetorical ways,concise language expression as well as the artistic discourse.This is worth learning by the readers and translators.Early stylistics is a combination of rhetoric and literature.With the development of modern linguistic theories,stylistics has gradually become an independent discipline.Later,stylistics and literary criticism combined to form literary stylistics.Literary stylistics studies the use of language in literature.Modern stylistics uses linguistic methods as a tool to describe and interpret literary discourses such as poetry,novels,and dramas,and to explain literary phenomena reasonably.The range of linguistic forms is wide,different scholars hold different views on this.Leech and Short divide the language form into four levels:vocabulary,grammar,rhetoric,cohesion and context?Leech&Short,2001:75-79?.Shen Dan mainly analyzes the nature and role of literary stylistics from the perspective of lexical expression,syntax,rhetoric and theme reproduction?Shen Dan,1995:1?.This paper focuses on three aspects of stylistic features:lexical,syntactic and rhetoric level.The author finds that Yang&Dai's translated language is concise,and the translation of nouns and adverbs is more accurate,which can not only convey the meaning of the original text,but also basically reproduces the psychological feelings of the original author.In terms of discourse level,their translation on the syntactic structure is better,but for thelong and short sentences,the emphatic sentences and conjunctions,they do not translate the original sentence structure because Yang Xianyi&Dai Naidie's translation style is simple and concise.Therefore,in these aspects of translation,their translation may be slightly insufficient.However,In terms of rhetoric level,Yang&Dai are perfect in understanding metaphor which hidden in the original text.Their translation can not only convey the original author's thoughts,but also better promote Chinese culture.In terms of repetition and rhythm,their translation is insufficient.Kinkley's translation mainly uses the literal translation method to reproduce the syntactic structure of the original text,his translation on rhetoric and rhythm is better than Kinkley's translation.Although Kinkley is an expert who studies Chinese language and literature,he is not a native speaker.So his understanding on vocabulary is not appropriate.He sometimes understands these words from surface level,so his translation on some words is not suitable.Kinkley uses literal translation to translate Bian Cheng,but definitely follow the original text will make its language not concise.