A Comparative Study Of Fictional Dialogue Translation In Two Chinese Versions Of Sense And Sensibility

As the first published novel of Jane Austen,Sense and Sensibility describes the life of the gentry class in England in the 19^th century.The language in this novel is humorous and the dialogues of characters are vivid.As an indispensable element of novel,fictional dialogues can shape the personality of characters with specific diction and tones.The success of fictional translation is determined to a great extent by the quality of fictional dialogue translation.But studies on the fictional dialogue translation of this novel can hardly be found.From the perspective of Halliday’s theory of register,this thesis analyzes the fictional dialogue translation in the two Chinese versions of Sense and Sensibility,which are translated by Sun Zhili and Wang Jiqing.The analysis has the following results:First,in terms of field,the two translated versions of this novel show similarities and differences in choosing words and in reproducing the speakers’tones.Both versions adopt the method of transliteration with annotations,but the information given in annotations is different.The two versions also have differences in translating cultural words.One employs the method of literal translation with annotation,while the other employs literal translation without annotation.In terms of tenor,these two translated versions differ from each other in the aspects of choosing diction,reproducing the speakers’tones,utilizing personal pronouns and dealing with the grammatical mistakes in dialogues.It means that they have different consideration for the issues of the speakers’social and educational backgrounds,and relationships.In terms of mode,first,the two translated versions are different in dealing with the long and complex sentences in the original text.One version prefers to divide the long and complex sentences into simple and short ones to make them be easily understood,while the other version tends to preserve the long and complex sentences by combining the meanings into one sentence,but the Europeanization of such translation is apparent.Although the two translated versions both adopt the method of adding modal particles to reproduce the speakers’tones and emotions,the number of modal particles used in these two versions is different,which means the colloquialism of the two translated versions is different.This thesis can offer some references for research on fictional dialogue translation and translation practice.