In-translating And Out-translating: A Contrastive Study Of Two English Versions Of Chaguan

In-translating and out-translating are two different translation directions, and as a kind of translation phenomenon, they are discussed by only a few scholars and observed from different reference points. In this thesis, the reference point of in-translating and out-translating is the same source text. That is to say, if translators translate the source text written in a foreign language into their own mother tongue, it is called in-translating, and if translators translate the source text written in their mother tongue into a foreign language, it is called out-translating. When in-translating and out-translating the same source text, translators will adopt different translation principles, strategies and methods, which finally leads to different effects in their translations.In terms of E-C translation, due to the unbalanced political, economical and cultural strengths between English countries and China, English translators living in a strong culture seldom translate English literary works into Chinese. Hence in-translating and out-translating of the same source text mostly occurs in C-E translation, but seldom in E-C translation.By analyzing in-translating and out-translating, the author finds that the two translation directions have influences on the translation principles, strategies and methods translators adopt, which are finally reflected in the translation effects. Generally, when translating Chinese literary works into English, Chinese translators tend to keep the principles of faithfulness and closeness, and accordingly adopt foreignization and literal translation, keeping down Chinese cultural images as possible as they can, and then their translations tend to be more faithful in content and close in form to the original. Whereas English translators tend to pay more attention to the naturalness and smoothness of their translations, satisfy the taste of the common readers, and accordingly adopt domestication and free translation, and thus their translations are more readable.The thesis explores what actually occurs in John Howard's in-translating and Ying Ruocheng's out-translating Lao She's Chaguan into English by means of a contrastive case study. Through contrasting the language features of the two English versions, the different translation principles, strategies and methods that the two translators adopt, and the different effects the two English versions achieve, the author finds that when translating Chaguan, the Chinese translator Ying Ruocheng, by taking stage performability into full consideration and taking audiences in the theatre as his intended readers, keeps the principle of performability and adopts domestication and free translation, and thus his translation is more colloquial, terse, intelligible and individual, and therefore more performable. Whereas the Canadian translator John Howard-Gibbon, due to a strong interest in Chinese and the culture, focuses more on the principles of faithfulness and closeness and adopts foreignization and literal translation, and thus keeps more Chinese cultural images in his translation which is therefore more readable. We find that the result achieved from the case study is quite different from the general practice of in-translating and out-translating and is a special case for the two translation directions. This can be seen as a supplement for the general ideas of in-translating and out-translating. Finally, the author figures out the reasons for such differences and finds that the differences are caused mainly by three factors: the particularity of drama translation, different translation purposes and different intended readers.