| This thesis explores the limits of translatability of dialects,Chinese folk wisecracks,set phrases,proverbs,slang,habitual expressions and other folk language in Julia Lovell's English translation of A Dictionary of Maqiao and The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China from the perspective of deconstruction translation theory.This study is intended to focus on three aspects: the factors influencing the limits of translatability of folk language in Lovell's A Dictionary of Maqiao and The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China;the translator's translation principles in the transformation from relative untranslatability to translatability;and the relationship between Lovell's translation behaviors and Venuti's conception of foreignizing translation.This study mainly takes a qualitative approach supplemented by a quantitative approach,involving case analysis and corpus statistics.The findings show that linguistic characteristics of the source text are related to the limits of translatability,and whether the metaphors of figurative Chinese folk wisecracks can be understood by native readers affects the limits of translatability;when local culture is rooted in proverbs,their limits of translatability are extremely low,and the untranslatability of their metaphorical meanings shows that the translator is following the rule of quantity;from the rule of curativeness,“différance” means to delay translating or even do nothing,and ellipsis,as a translation strategy,is actually a way of protecting folk novels;for slang,habitual expressions and other folk language with regional characteristics,Lovell tends to translate them literally or freely,and whichever translation strategy she adopts,the translator is committed to introducing foreign cultural factors in the source language to target language readers,which is essentially a compromise of “preserving differences” from Venuti's conception of foreignizing translation. |
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