A Contrastive Study On Three Chinese Versions Of Great Expectations From The Perspective Of Inter-subjectivity

Charles Dickens is one of the great literature masters in Britain in the 19 th century.He is the greatest writer in the history of British literature after Shakespeare.Great Expectations is viewed as his most outstanding work in his latter career,and it is also the most perfect one of all his works both in language and in structure.This novel has presented Dickens' humorous and satirical writing style to great extent.It enjoys great popularity among young readers and is of great significance in shaping the value and outlook on life of teenagers nowadays.The inter-subjectivity theory can break the binary opposition between subject and object in the translation process,and can establish an equal dialogue among multiple cognitive subjects.It gets rid of the paradigm which reveals that one subject is always prior to others in subjectivity studies.It also provides a new perspective and a new method for the translation research.Since Great Expectations was firstly introduced into domestic literature field,many scholars have done some researches on its translations from different perspectives,but there is a lack of the research on inter-subjective relationships.Therefore,this thesis would adopt a contrastive analysis on language level to explore the inter-subjective relationship among the author,the translator and the reader.Three Chinese versions of Great Expectations selected in this paper are respectively by Wang Keyi,Luo Zhiye,Zhu Wan and Ye Zun.Grounded on inter-subjectivity theory,the present author makes an analysis of the inter-subjective relationship among three subjects and intends to find out different translation skills employed by three translators.Through the analysis,it could be found that three translators have employed different translation skills to deal with the inter-subjective relationship between the author and the translator,and the relationship between the translator and the reader.Wang Keyi makes a fusion with the author's horizon through the application of pun and metaphor,and he makes use of some colloquial words to satisfy his readers' expectations.Luo Zhiye makes use of some Chinese idioms andmakes adjustments of paragraphs to get close to the author's horizon,and he keeps his translations faithful to the original order of sentence as so to satisfy his readers' expectations for exotic flavor.Zhu Wan prefers to retain the original structure of sentence and revise some wrong expressions of the source text.The inter-subjectivity in translation determines that translators in different times should rely on their own methods of communication to achieve a fusion with the author's and target readers' horizons.Then distinctive translations can also be produced.It provides a new perspective for the study on retranslation.