A Contrastive Study Of The English Translation Of Female Description In The Two Full Translations Of Xi You Ji From The Perspective Of Construal

In Xi You Ji,the author Wu Chengen uses colorful words to portray for the reader characters with different and distinctive personalities.In addition to the main characters,the Tang Monk and his disciples,the ordinary people and demons encountered on their journey also play an important role in forming the storyline,with a large number of female characters appearing among them.With the entry of Western Christian missionaries into China,Xi You Ji began to reach Western readers.Since then,the process of translating has never stopped,and most translations of the work are abridged and selected,with only two full translations in English by the translators W.J.F.Jenner and Anthony C.Yu.At present,there are numerous studies on Xi You Ji and its translations.Character studies mainly focus on comparing the changes in the image of the Tang Monk,Sun Wukong,the Pig and Bodhisattva Guanyin in the source text and the translations,while the construction of female characters in the translation has rarely been touched upon.This thesis adopts Langacker’s construal to conduct a detailed analysis of the description of female characters’ external appearance,speech and actions in Anthony C.Yu’s and Jenner’s translations to explore the portrayal of female characters in the two full translations.The research questions are how the two translators differ in their understanding of the description of female characters;how these differences are reflected in the four dimensions of construal;and the impact of the translators’ construal on the portrayal of female characters.In the dimension of scope and background,Jenner’s translation is more concerned with the immediate scope of expression and ignores the maximal scope,which makes the characteristics of the female characters blurred in Jenner’s translation more than in Anthony C.Yu’s translation.In the dimension of perspective,the words used to refer to women in Jenner’s translation are derogatory,and the status of female characters is lower in his translation than in Anthony C.Yu’s.In terms of prominence,the two translations focus on different objects in the same scene.In terms of specificity,the language of the female characters in Jenner’s translation is more detailed than in Yu’s translation.Comparing the two full translations,the translators’ construal operations in translating the description of female characters in the source text can be found in their translation methods.Therefore,when translating the language,appearance and actions related to the characters in the source work,the translators need to take into account the context and period of the source work and use a translation that fits the characteristics of the characters in order to convey the accurate characterization.