| In spite of missing the Nobel Prize for Literature, Shen Congwen created a large number of works and criticisms. His most representative and original works are short stories with distinctive local colors in West Hunan in the early20th century. His Biancheng is undoubtedly the brightest pearl among all the rural novels in modern Chinese literature. The novel has been translated into nine languages and there are four English translations of it so far:Border Town by Emily Hahn and ShaoXunmei in1936, The Frontier City by Ching Ti and Robert Payne in1947, The Border Town by Gladys Yang in1981, and Border Town by Jeffrey C. Kinkley in2009. As Shen Congwen’s masterpiece, Biancheng has aroused endless domestic researches. In addition, there has been many studies on its English versions, especially Gladys Yang’s, but few systematical study has been made to criticize Kinkley’s one, the latest translation of Biancheng.Biancheng is of long-lasting artistic charm and social significance because of its local colors; therefore, whether the English translation successfully conveys its local colors would have a direct impact on foreign readers’ aesthetic experience and heavily determine whether the translation is a success or failure. In addition, Jeffrey C.Kinkley, as a scholar-translator, composed The Odyssey of Shen Congwen and personally visited Shen for many times. It can be said that Kinkley is the most qualified translator of Biancheng with his familiarity with Shen. Therefore, it’s worthy of our study to investigate in depth whether Kinkley retains the original features and delivers cultures in West Hunan, and whether his translation approaches have successfully reproduced the creative characteristics of the rural literature to make rural novels known by the English world with its local customs and language feats.From the perspective of rural literature theory and domestication and foreignization, this paper focuses study on Kinkley’s translation and resorts to its comparison with Gladys’version. It systematically analyzes Kinkley’s reproduction of the original local colors from four aspects:rural settings, rural characters, the use of rural language and plots revolving around rituals in order to explore his translation strategy and achievements. On the basis of it, this paper aims to highlight the feasibility of rural literary theory on refining, appreciating and criticizing literary activities, and demonstrates its contribution to a better grasp of the organic connection between language styles and translation strategies.It is found that only when translating rural dialect and conversations, Kinkley inclines to domestication to reproduce the vivid rural characters created by Shen Congwen in Biancheng. In the case of preserving the description of rural setting, ballads, rural proverbs, Kinkley makes good use of foreignization, especially annotation. Therefore, maintaining many typical expressions used in West Hunan in translation, Kinkley not only provides his readers with rich information about culture in West Hunan, but also preserves local flavors in the original.Despite that there are still some shortcomings in delivering the local colors of Biancheng, as a foreign scholar, Kinkley has done a good job in skillfully adopting translation approaches to introduce modern Chinese rural literature to the Western World. His translation played a particularly significant role in global communications between Chinese and Westerners in rural literature nowadays. |
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