An Analysis Of Translation Style Of The Two English Translations Of Nahan From The Perspective Of Translator’s Subjectivity

Nahan is the first collection of short stories by Lu Xun,marking the beginning and development of modern Chinese new literature.A revolutionary realism was employed in the book of Nahan and it disclosed the semi-feudal and semi-colonial Chinese society at that time,profoundly exposing the oppressive and maiming of the ruling class to the ordinary people,and in praise of the heroic struggle of the revolutionary democratic warriors enthusiastically.Lu Xun created new writing techniques and sources of content in Nahan,and formed his own unique writing styles,which has been influential and inspiring among authors and readers until nowadays.Since the first publication of Ah Q Zhengzhuang translated by George Kin Leung in 1926,there have been more than forty translations of Nahan translated by scholars and translators at home and abroad,including anthologies or complete translations of Lu Xun’s works.Among them,translations of Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang and William Lyell have gained a wide reader all over the world due to a comparatively complete translation of Lu Xun’s short stories and an emphasis on Lu Xun’s writing style.In this thesis,a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis is rendered to access and evaluate the translation styles of two English Translations of Nahan by Yangs and Lyell.The thesis uses the Wordsmith and AntConc as a tool of text analysis to pick out words of high-frequency,specific words of high-keyness in each translation from the perspective of quantitative analysis.At the same time,the thesis offers a qualitative analysis to explore the translation style of the two translations through analyzing the translation of characterization and the social context.Different from other theses which conclude with the different translation style of the target text,this thesis explores the relationships between the translator’s subjectivity and translation style in the two English translations from aspects of translator’s aesthetic capacity,aesthetic empathy and ideal.Through the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the two translations,it is found that there are both similarities and differences of their translation style.The most frequent words they apply in the target text is “the”,“and” and some grammatical words so on and a word length of three characters hold a highest percentage.However,compared with Yangs’ translation style,which seems plainer and tends to be more literal translation,the Lyell’s translation style tends to be more inflated and vivid by using italicized and capital words to represent the unique style of Lu Xun’s stories.As an expert of Lu Xun,Lyell called as a scholar translator realizes the profound realism of Lu Xun’s short stories.In order to help readers to understand the history of China at that time,Lyell adds a lot of footnotes in the translation and uses a method of interpretative translation.While Yangs believe that loyalty to the style of source text is the most important and no other information should be added in the target text due to a respect of the original author and text.Therefore,as translators,Yangs and Lyell both emphasize the style of the original text,though they choose different translation methods and strategies,which reflects the influence of the translator’s subjectivity on the translation style.Translation style is a significant part in literary translation.Through quantitative and qualitative analysis,a combination of data analysis and text interpretation,this thesis explores the translation style of the two English translations by Yangs and Lyell and analyzes the influence of translator’s subjectivity on translation style.This thesis hopes to provide some references for translators in literary translation.