A Comparative Study On The Two English Renditions Of Zi Bu Yu From The Perspective Of Textual Coherence

Zi bu yu(《子不语》is a collection of short ghost stories written by Yuan Mei.It has two English versions by far:Censored by Confucius:Ghost Stories by Yuan Mei,an abridged version published in 1996 and What the Master Would Not Discuss,According to Yuan Mei:A Collection of Supernatural Stories,a full version published in 2013.In the process of comparative reading,we find that there are great differences in the achievement of coherence between the two versions.Since discourse coherence is an important factor affecting readability,different ways of achieving coherence will inevitably produce different reading experience and serve different translation purposes.Based on this understanding,this study attempts at a glimpse into the differences in coherence mechanism between different translation types through a comparative study of the two renditions.To that end,the study starts with the following three questions: 1.What are the differences between the two versions in terms of coherence? 2.Why do these differences exist? 3.What translation effects are achieved?Using the discourse analysis theory of systemic-functional linguistics as an analytical tool,the study finds that both versions deviate from the original by addition of themes and alteration of thematic progression pattern(TTP,but to different degrees.Comparatively speaking,the frequency of deviation in the full translation is lower than that in the abridged translation.The way of deviation in the full version is mainly limited to additions of the textual theme,with only occasional,slight alterations of TPP.The abridged version,in contrast,shows a marked preference for interpersonal themes and alterations of TPP.The main reason for this difference lies in the different translation purposes of the two versions.The full version belongs to the "documentary translation" proposed by the German functional school of translation theories while the abridged version belongs to the "instrumental translation".The full rendition is aimed at readers who are interested in Chinese society and culture in the 18 th century as well as the original text itself,so it tries to make a "replication" of the original text as accurate as possible,both in content and in form.The abridged version is intended for a much wider range of readers,including not only students who read it for knowledge about China,but also ordinary readers who read it for fun.For this reason,the translator adopts much more flexible strategies in the achievement of coherence and lays a special emphasis on readability.On the whole,in most cases,the coherence of the abridged version is better than that of the full translation,with a result of being more readable and natural.The full translation is relatively plain in style and sometimes it is clumsy because it fails to solve the problems caused by the differences between the English and Chinese languages,with a result of retaining more linguistics features of Chinese.In short,in line with their respective translation purposes,the full version reproduces the original text to a larger extent,though not infrequently at the cost of readability;the abridged version brings readers a better reading experience,though not so faithful to the original text.