A Study On The English Translation Of The Earthen Gate From The Perspective Of George Steiner’s Hermeneutics Translation Theory

The Earthen Gate is one of the representative works of Chinese contemporary writer Jia Pingwa which was published in 1996 and tells a story about the urbanization process of a village.The original work of The Earthen Gate abounds in Shaanxi local culture and customs,and the dialogues in the novel contain a lot of legends and allusions.Although the Chinese version of The Earthen Gate was published very early,the English version has n ot been published for a long time,so there are few related translation studies.In this study,the author uses George Steiner’s hermeneutics theory to explore the English translation of The Earthen Gate co-translated by Hu Zongfeng and He Longping,hoping to broaden the research on the English translation of modern Shaanxi literary works.Based on philosophical hermeneutics,George Steiner proposes four steps of translation process:trust,aggression,incorporation,and compensation.The first step in hermeneutics translation theory of George Steiner is to "trust",that is,to believe that the original work has the value of translation.Then translators,intentionally or unintentionally,"invaded" the original text when they explain the meaning expressed in the source language.The following aspects are the main "aggression" of the translators,such as social background,material culture,religious beliefs,and linguistic expression.The third step is translators’ incorporation of cultural meaning and linguistic form in the English version of The Earthen Gate.The last step is for translators to take different measures to compensate for the missing information in translation.This study is conducted under the theoretical guidance of the four steps of translation based on hermeneutics proposed by George Steiner.Taking the English translation of Jia Pingwa’s classic novel The Earthen Gate as the object of study,the author of this thesis adopts such methods as documentary analysis,case study,and comparative analysis to analyze how to achieve the balance between the original text and the translation and the balance between Shaanxi local culture and western culture in the translation process.The study shows that the four steps of hermeneutic translation theory run through the translation process of the English translation of The Earthen Gate.The case study of the application of hermeneutics translation theory in the English translation of The Earthen Gate is helpful to explore how Shaanxi local culture can be better accepted by foreign readers and how Shaanxi local cultural elements can be retained in the process of translation,which can help foreign readers to understand Shaanxi modern literary works better and to spread Shaanxi literary works across the world.