Reproduction Of Style In Fictional Translation

Journey to the West has long been one of the hot spot of Chinese classical literature study. Featuring in a mix of archaisms and vernacular Chinese, a great number of five to seven character lines and a great employment of figures of speech, however, the problem is how to treat these language features in translation and how does the English versions like? Indeed, the specialized analysis and study on reproduction of the original style in its English versions are far from satisfaction. Therefore, this paper is attempting to make a comprehensive study on Jenner's version by adopting stylistic approaches.At present, the center of translation study has altered from the original authors and works to the target readers, thus lead the shortage in study on the loyalty and equivalence to the original style. Cultural school believes that translations can be totally separated from the original text; Structuralist even sets out the thought that it is not the translations depend on original text, but on the contrary. However, this paper holds that style is the centre issue of literature translation, which is not only translatable but ought to be translated. Based on the study of the novel home and abroad, this paper lies on the traditional faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, takes Nida's equivalent translation as theoretical foundation which co-works with stylistic analysis to explore the reproduction of stylistic features of the original text at the lexical, syntactical levels etc..Applying the translation and stylistic theories, this paper illustrates Jenner's translational style through analysis from lexical level, syntactical level and figures of speech, including puns and word play, simile and irony. Through this study, it finds out that Jenner's version is trying to adapt to the original style so as to attract the target reader and be in line with the original text except for some mistranslation which is due to the unavoidable disparity between Chinese and English in structure, vocabulary, grammar, rhetorical devices and style, etc. This paper can play some instructive effect on text analysis and translation study. It sets an example for the study on classical literature study by the combination of both translation and stylistic theories.