A Comparative Study Of Chinese Versions Of Hamlet In Light Of The Integrated Approach

Always a conundrum to anyone in the circle, translation is almost an everlasting mountain Himalayas in the field of language for theorists and practitioners to conquer with great enthusiasm. And the coexistence of different versions and theories of many classic works with various critics and schools of theory is more than a proof of this.Of all Shakespearian works including tragic masterpieces, Hamlet always stands out as the best and attracts wide attention. As the best of Shakespeare's work, Hamlet displays a charm which is also irresistible to Chinese translators.As early as around May Fourth Movement in China, there appeared the said first Chinese version of Hamlet by Tian Han and later on, different versions came out like mushrooms. However, these versions are received differently: some are still referred to as models while some have sunk into oblivion. To explore the reason behind the phenomena, we shall go back to translation theories.It is widely accepted that translation can be divided into two categories, source language oriented and target language oriented. And recent studies have focused on target- language-related elements such as purpose, target reader, etc. which are in accordance with German school of functionalism that"end justifies means". Nevertheless, no matter how important the purpose or the end is, the original shall always be the working material.And here, in the present paper, the author discusses the text type theory of Peter Newmark and his dual theory of semantic and communicative translation, trying to bring the stands of the two theories closer and produce a combined one of the two theories. It is as the following, taking the SL text as the material basis, deciding its text type according to Newmark's text type theory, the translator shall choose a semantic or vocative approach accordingly; meanwhile, after the analysis of TL text-related elements or a good understanding of the translation purpose, the translator will render the details of the SL text in light of the actual need.After setting up the theoretical frame of the combined approach and giving a brief account of Shakespeare's dramas, the following chapter examines how far the combined approach can be applied in English-Chinese translations with a comparative study of the...