Intralingual Translation In The Framework Of Poetics

This thesis attempts to scrutinize the impact of poetics on Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing)'s intralingual translation of the novel Sing-song Girls of Shanghai, by analyzing from the perspective of poetics why Chang decided to translate the book from Wu dialect into Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) and how she translated it, thus bring out some reflected features of intralingual translation compared with interlingual translation, showing their similarities.Eileen Chang, a famous modern Chinese writer with her unique style of writing, also worked as a translator. Her translation of the traditional Chinese chapter novel Sing-song Girls is generally considered as the most outstanding work and particular case in her translation career, for she did both intralingual and interlingual translations for this novel. With the enlightenment mainly from Lefevere's theory of poetics that is quite popular in studies of interlingual translation, the essay studies Chang's intralingual translation work under one of the four categories of translation studies proposed by Susan Bassnett—"Translation and Poetics". It investigates the reasons of the unpopularity of the original novel caused by poetics, as well as the interaction between the novel's poetics and Chang's personal poetics for explaining why she insisted on doing the translation. Besides, it elaborates the translation strategies employed by Chang that are controlled by dominant poetics and source poetics at once. Based on this analysis, it finally points out the common ground between intralingual translation and its interlingual counterpart to some extent—Intralingual translation is sometimes a cross-contextual communication, like its interingual counterpart.