A Study On The English Translations Of Hao Qiu Zhuan

Hao Qiu Zhuan,also known as Di Er Cai Zi Hao Qiu Zhuan,Xia Yi Feng Yue Zhuan or Yi Xia Hao Qiu Zhuan,was compiled in four volumes,eighteen chapters.The novel was issued in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty under the name of Ming Jiao Zhong Ren.The identity of the author and the exact date of publishing are still unknown.It writes about the love story of Tie Zhongyu and Shui Bingxin.This novel has a good storyline and distinctive characters,which make it a typical Scholar and Beauty novel in Ming and Qing Dynasties.In the early eighteenth century,Hao Qiu Zhuan has become the earliest Chinese classical novel translated into English.However,there are still some gaps in the current domestic and foreign researches.Among the 43 papers searched by the thesis author,most of papers discussed Thomas Percy's translation in 1761 and only five papers compared Thomas Percy's translation and John Francis Davis' translation in 1829.The other translations are less mentioned and it is hard to find a word or two on them.In this thesis,the author collects the five translations and makes a comparative study among them.Most scholars evaluate English translations of Hao Qiu Zhuan from a certain translation perspective,such as Skopos,the linguistic and cultural perspectives,etc.But the author holds the view that any translation is the complex outcome of the sociocultural environment of the target language,the identity of the translator,and the original text and it is inadvisable to neglect each one of them.This paper adopts the methods of translation history research and text analysis.Firstly,this paper combs the translation history of Hao Qiu Zhuan in European countries and explores the features of the five English translations.As several highly authoritative studies on full translations—Thomas Percy's translation and John Francis Davis' translation,are relatively complete,this paper takes the two translations as samples,and studies the discrepancies in arrangement of chapters and plots,the description of figures and annotation among the two full translations and the two abridged translations,and explores the factors that result in these discrepancies from the perspectives of the socio-cultural environment of target language,identity of translator,and the original text.Then,the author makes a comparative study among two full translations and Bedford-Jones' translation in 1926—a secondary translation from a French translation,and explores discrepancies in titles of chapters,the translation of poems,and the adjustment of the plot.The reasons for the differences are discussed as well.Major findings of this thesis are as follows:Firstly,the five translations of Hao Qiu Zhuan are all distinctive and show greater independence and difference.Secondly,the translation of Hao Qiu Zhuan embodies the integration of culture and text,which is the reproduction of cultural identity,cultural filtering,cultural interpretation,and cultural carrier.Thirdly,the English translation of Hao Qiu Zhuan was firstly viewed as Encyclopedia of Chinese culture,then became the sample of Chinese fiction.Later it offered the taste of China and was finally regarded as a novel with excellent writing skill.The changes of social functions of the English translation of Hao Qiu Zhuan also reflect the westerners' cognition history of China.Lastly,as the first Chinese classical novel full translated into European languages,Hao Qiu Zhuan attracted the attention of westerners and opened the curtain of the western translation history of Chinese classical literature and became the object of imitation in the translation and dissemination of other Chinese classical novels,which reflects slow transition of westerners' attention from Confucian classics to Chinese classical novel.