A Comparative Study Of The Two Chinese Translations Of The Woman In White From The Perspective Of Yan Fu's Xin Da Ya

As a classic work of the Victoria age and a novel pioneering British detective fiction,The Woman in White is exquisite in its overall layout and suspense settings,unique in its narrative techniques,having a high literature value and worth to be studied.In order to let the Chinese readers enjoy this novel as well,a good Chinese translation is thus necessary.Due to differences between languages,it is not always that easy to translate,thus requiring certain translation standards or principles,specific translation methods and techniques.In the long Chinese translation history,Yan Fu's Xin Da Ya is the most famous theory and has been adopted by most Chinese translators in their practices.With Yan Fu's translation standard as the principle,and considering the linguistic differences between English and Chinese,this study makes a comparative study of the two Chinese versions of The Woman in White to see how the two translators apply Xin Da Ya to their translation practices of words,phrases and sentences,and what translation strategies they use to realize this standard to the greatest extend.Meanwhile,when analyzing the two translations,the author also provides her own ideas and summarizes specific translation skills such as conversion.Finally,the study shows that,first,both translations generally reached and complied with Xin Da Ya;second,in lexical,phrasal and sentence level,both translators combined literal and liberal translation.Therefore,this thesis concludes that the Xin Da Ya theory is still of guiding significance in today's translation practice,and that the two strategies of literal and liberal translation can be combined.Then the thesis points out that in E-C translation process,expressiveness is as important as faithfulness,and Chinese as important as English.Based on this,the author also hopes that translators,while enhancing their English skills,could also read more excellent traditional Chinese culture and polish their mother tongue to maintain pure and nature Chinese expressions,avoid Europeanized Chinese or overused translationese,and on the premise of correctly understanding and not changing the meaning of the original text,to translate the original meaning in authentic and smooth Chinese.