Irish Folklore In Thick Translation

The Celtic Twilight,a collection of short essays,folktales,and anecdotes collected in Sligo and Galway,Ireland,is one of the early works of William Butler Yeats,the 1923 Nobel laureate in literature.Combining his encounter with the local people and his own thoughts,Yeats published the first edition of his gatherings in 1893,which reflected the customs and culture of the region.Kwame Anthony Appiah first put forward the theory of thick translation in 1993,which endeavors to explain the rich source of cultural context in the translated text by means of annotating and glossing.It aims to facilitate the target readers,comprehension and gain a deeper respect for the other culture.From the perspective of thick translation,this thesis conducted a comparative study of the three Chinese versions of The Celtic Twilight,that is,Wang Biying’s version published in 2009,Yan Shuang’s version published in 2013,and Yin Gao’s version published in 2014,and analyzed the translators’ characteristics in regard to the translation of Irish folklore.Combing the main text with its paratext as an organic whole,the author made a systematic analysis of thick translation methods in the three versions.In textual analyses,the author classifies the folkloric elements in The Celtic Twilight into two types,that is,general folkloric elements and specific folkloric elements,and then discusses their representations from the perspective of thick translation and how different elements were translated in the three versions.Then the author analyses the external and internal paratextual elements of the three Chinese versions with respect to thick translation.The study found that thick translation has an significant role to play in translating Irish folklore.From the perspective of thick translation,when translating general folkloric elements in the main text,literal translation alone will suffice to deliver their meanings.However,specific folkloric elements require more detailed explanation even though it may take up more space.As far as paratextual elements are concerned,the more information that is provided,the better the result of the translation of Irish folklore.Wang and Yin’s versions,by adopting annotations,translator’s preface or postscripts,succeeded in delivering the Irish folklore to the readers,while Yan’s version,which contained no notes,fails to expound relevant Irish folkloric elements.Therefore,Yan’s version did not conform to the requirements of thick translation,not allowing readers to understand the deeper meaning of these folkloric elements.The study expands the scope of translation studies concerning Yeats’ works,and may have some theoretical and practical values to both the translation of Irish folklore into Chinese and the translation of Chinese folklore into other languages.