A Study Of Inheritance And Innovation In Shakespeare’s Plays Retranslated With Special Reference To Wang Hongyin’s Retranslation Of Hamlet Into Chinese

Hamlet as Shakespeare’s representative play displays great vitality and charm and hasbeen attracting translators with different cultural backgrounds in different periods to translateit enthusiastically from English into other languages since its first appearance. As far as itsChinese translation is concerned, since1921when Tian Han rendered a part of it into Chinese,there have been translated versions coming one after another out of the hands of well-knownChinese translators and scholars, which have been deepening our understanding andinterpretation of the classical work. The year2012saw the publication of Wang Hongyin’snew re-translated version, which informed by some preliminary analysis, shows multifacetedfeatures of its own, creating new perspectives for the contemporary Chinese readers toappreciate the play. Therefore, it is necessary for us to research Wang’s new translation in theChinese tradition of translating Shakespeare’s plays so that the inheritance, innovation andachievement of this new translation can be clarified.The research project focuses on the inheritance and innovation of the retranslatedversions of Hamlet with special reference to the new translation by Wang Hongyin. The keyresearch questions includes what the new features Wang’s new translation are and how theretranslated one is related to the previous major translations in terms of inheritance andinnovation. Methodologically, this research project, which doesn’t adopt the conventionalcritical research method based on what is right or wrong in the translation compared with theoriginal, thereby labeling the translated version, chooses to focus on solving the researchquestions through analysis of typical examples under the backdrop of researching ZhuShenghao’s, Liang Shiqiu’s, Sun Dayu’s and Bian Zhilin’s translated versions which are thefour more popular ones among Chinese readers. The research emphasis lies in the creativeaspects of the new version, so that we can have a better understanding of Wang Hongyin’spersonal esthetical attainments in rendering the play, which will also manifest something ofthe historical phenomenon of re-translating classic literary work. More attention will be paid to analysis of Wang’s efforts to retaining the literary merits in translating it for the Chinesereadership. Therefore, the basis procedure of this research project is, first, to study theprevious major Chinese translations of Hamlet on the basis of the relevant literature, andsecond, to explore the inheritance and innovation of Wang’s new translation in that traditionof Chinese translation of Hamlet.It is found that Wang’s new Chinese translation displays some inheritance from thoseprevious ones as exemplified by his adoption of a number of translated versions of somewords and proper names from them and the way of rendering the act-end couplet, and on theother hand, his translation realizes innovation in such main aspects as the overall profile, hisnew translation principles, and his translating strategies for example, using the marginalannotating, creative thinking in folk songs’ translation and deep understanding andphilosophical reading of the original work. In terms of Chinese translation editions ofShakespeare’s plays, his translation draws on the way of making annotation on the traditionalChinese novels, which is unprecedented in rendering Hamlet. On the whole, the newtranslation tends to be more accurate in understanding the original, more flexible and detailedin rendering methods, more revealing culturally and more natural and image-ladenlinguistically with better stage effect. The translation represents new achievement intranslating Shakespeare into Chinese and new contribution to Shakespeare studies and theChinese translation edition system of Shakespeare’s plays.