A Comparative Analysis Of The Catcher In The Rye's Chinese Versions From Lefevere's Four Aspects Of Translation

The Catcher in the Rye, the only one novel of J. D. Salinger, attracts much attention when it is published. Some people think that it is a special novel, because of the main character Holden's unique type of language; some think that it should be banned, also due to Holden's language --- full of curse and sex. As time goes on, many people think that it is one of influential novels in American literature history.There are two important Chinese versions of The Catcher in the Rye-- Shi Xianrong's version and Sun Zhongxu's. This thesis adopts AndréLefevere's four aspects of translation—ideology, poetics, universe of discourse and language—to comparatively analyze the two Chinese versions. From the aspect of ideology, the Chinese ideology in the 1980s is different from that in the 2000s. Shi's version is more conservative than Sun's on translating some sensitive words. The poetic aspect is to some extent influenced by the ideology, especially the theme; indeed, the themes of the two versions differ from each other. The theme of Shi's version is to reflect the problems of the youths in America; meanwhile, expresses that the youths in China are cared by all society, from the government to parents. In addition, the two versions differ in the aspect of universe of discourse; this aspects mainly focus on the exotic points, analyzing from the points of idioms, customs, etc. About the last aspect language, this thesis studies Holden's language and the translation strategies of the two versions; Sun's version adopts the strategy of domestication much more than Shi's. In summary, linguistic analysis and cultural analysis can go hand in hand; when linguistic analysis cannot explain the complexity phenomenon of translation, cultural analysis, for example, the aspect of translation, can do the justice to the translation phenomenon.