Style Reproduction Of The Godfather In Chinese Translation

The Godfather by Mario Puzo has been considered a cultural landmark in American publishing history; however, its Chinese translation by Zhou Hanlin does not win over the Chinese readers. From the perspective of style reproduction, this thesis aims to address the unpopularity of the Chinese translated product, published by Yinlin Press. Zhou’s translation fails to reproduce the style of the original work, according to the detailed stylistic analysis. At the lexical level, Zhou vulgarizes the source text with its mistranslations of appellations, slang and the excessive use of dialects of Chinese. At the syntactical level, the lack of a consistent and unified translation of the recurrent phrase---I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse devalues the thematic significance. The patterns of the clusters of adjectives as modifiers are violently deformed, and the effect of clarity and brevity is reduced to quite the opposite. The passive voice also loses its force in the Chinese transition. In terms of figures of speech, the patterns of repetition are violated or simply removed, which puts the translation below the par. By enhancing sensitivity to the stylistic choices by writers, translators can do a better job of conveying the stylistic messages via the target language.