Neutralization In Chinese Translation Of The Mayor Of Casterbridge

The translation history can be viewed as a history of the debate between free translation and literal translation, both at home and abroad. Foreignization and Domestication can be regarded as the further development of literal translation and free translation in essence, and they focus on not only the linguistic transformation, but also involve the culture, politics and aesthetics, etc. In the past days, the controversy over literal translation and free translation has been a long standing issue both at home and abroad, and nowadays, the conflict between Foreignization and Domestication has never stopped. Those who favor Domestication put emphasis on providing readers with a fluent translation and those who support Foreignization aim at providing readers with a translation with the original flavor.The author in this thesis thinks that the translated literary works over-domesticated or over-foreignized are both unacceptable, and the Neutralization strategy is the optimal. Zhang Guruo’s translation versions are considered to be the representation of Neutralization strategy. Neutralization refers to an effect that, after reading a translation work, the target language reader feels that, the language in the translation is idiomatic and fluent and the translation is also full of the foreign flavor. In translating literary works, a translator can get this effect as far as possible in his translation by adopting some techniques. Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang together have provided us with many good translation works and they make a great contribution to our translation course, but the studies on their translation are few. After making a simple study on Neutralization strategy and also based on the Neutralization strategy, the thesis makes a detailed study on Zhangs’(Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang’s) translation version of The Mayor ofCasterbridge, companied by a comparative study with another translation version. The author finds out that the Zhangs(Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang) adopt the various techniques in order to achieve idiomaticity and fluency in their translation, such as incorporation of dialects, use of four-character phrases and adjustment of word orders, etc. Most of all, compared with the other versions, the incorporation of dialects and the use of four-character phrases make their version read more idiomatic, just like an original work. In order to convey the foreign flavor, Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang also adopt some other techniques, such as literal translation of the proper noun, literal translation of the original images in rhetoric, literal translation of scenery description and footnotes. The adoption of these techniques produces an idiomatic version which is also full of the foreign flavor. In the end, the thesis concludes that, in translating The Mayor of Casterbridge, Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang didn’t over-domesticate this novel nor over-foreignize it, but neutralized it as much as they can. The success of their translation is indispensable to their attainment in both Chinese and English, their strict attitude toward translation and the influences of Zhang Guruo and his translation. Zhang Guruo, who is respected as the Hardy expert, has successfully translated many works by Hardy and his translation thought surely will have influences on his children.The study on translators and their translation works is of great importance to the development of translation theory and translation practice. The Neutralization strategy adopted by Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang in their translation works puts emphasis not only on the idiomaticity and fluency of one translation, but also on its foreign flavor, such as the culture of a foreign country. The Neutralization strategy can enrich the translation theory and is also helpful to the translation practice. Moreover, although there are considerable limitations and defects in this thesis, the studies on Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang are few in number and this thesis provides us with a new study point.