A Study On The Chinese-English Translation Of Character Names In Xiyou Ji In Light Of Semiotics

Xiyou Ji,one of the Chinese classic novels,contains a great number of character names.These names reflect traditional Chinese cultural elements including Taoism,Confucianism,Buddhism and so on.In order to explore the translation of character names,this thesis chooses two complete English versions of Xiyou Ji translated by William John Francis Jenner and Anthony C.Yu as research sources.In addition,to analyze the English translation of character names,the thesis adopts semiotics,a theory focusing on signs,as a framework and categorizes the names into three types of the monsters(including yao,mo,gui,and guai),immortals and mortals.The thesis analyzes and explains cultural implications and semiotic meanings in character names of Xiyou Ji.According to the semiotics,the thesis selects typical examples to make comparison of character names and their translations.Three research questions are to be answered:(1)Do the two translators identify the semiotic meanings of character names in the source text ?(2)What are the differences between the two English versions of Xiyou Ji ?(3)What are the reasons that caused the differences in the translation of character names?To reach the desired goal,the researcher uses the semiotic meaning by Charles Morris and the semiotic triadic model theory by Charles Sanders as the theoretical framework.The three semiotic meanings include referential meaning,linguistic meaning and pragmatic meaning.Peirce divides the signs into three parts including representmen,object and interpretant.Through analyzing the features of character names,the thesis explains the semiotic meanings in these character names and makes comparison to the English translation of the character names.And the thesis indicates the differences of the two translators' translation.Based on Peirce triadic model,the thesis analyzes the character names with obvious differences between the source text and the target text,and then clarifies the main reasons that caused the differences.The comparison of the two English translations of character names reveals that pragmatic meaning accounts for the largest proportion.In addition,the differentsemiotic processes of translation are presented by the two translators such as literal translation,free translation,borrowing,modulation and adaptation.So after comparing two versions of translation,the thesis finds out Jenner focuses on referential meaning and linguistic meaning in the translation of character name and Yu's translation mainly displays the pragmatic meaning.Accordingly,by using Peirce's semiotic triadic model,the thesis also finds out that most English intrepretants have the same effects as they are in the source text.