A Research On The English Translation Of Chinese Slang-Based On Luotuo Xiangzi And Its English Versions

Lao She is acknowledged as the “Master of Languages” in the literary circle,whose language is humorous, close to life, heavily colored by regionalism and full of“Beijing flavor”. Luotuo Xiangzi is one of the representative literary works containing“Beijing flavor”. However, since the cultural turn in translation studies, many researchers turn to the cultural studies of Luotuo Xiangzi with the neglect of language,the carrier of culture. Thus, the Chinese slang in the works and its translation have received little attention from scholars since then. Owing to the unclear understanding of the slang, people tend to have impressionistic mistaken concept of Chinese slang on the basis of classic images and definitions of the English and American slang. In fact, the Chinese slang came into being since the ancient times. As time passes by, the definition of Chinese slang still remains a disputed issue so far. The slang in Luotuo Xiangzi distinctly reveals the flexibility and changeability in oral languages. Thus, as one of the marginalized social language variation, the Chinese slang owns unique character compared with standard language, which provides a new and valuable research subject in translation studies. The Chinese slang, a language variety equally important to the Standard Mandarine Chinese in terms of its linguistic status, is characterized by colloquialism, vulgarism, vividness, humor, rich in expression like swear words, set phrases, idioms, and others forms, popular among groups of people. Because of its complexities in components, and various ways of expression, the translation of Chinese slang poses a tough challenge to translators.The thesis uses four English translations of Luotuo Xiangzi by Evan King(1945),Jean M. James(1979), Shi Xiaojing(2001), and Howard Goldblatt(2010) as the source of data. It is found that there are 535 occurrences of slang and slang sentences in the original(words accounting for 92%, phrases 7%, sentences 1%). Then, the Chinese slang is redefined in light of the definitions, compositions and characteristics of the slang from the past till now and further expounded on its main features, linguistic and social functions through the preliminary analysis of 535 occurrences of slang and slang sentences instructed by qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, on which the related four pairs of contradictory relations are examined in the Chinese slangtranslation. The pairs of relations are nationality and naturalness of language, the form and content in translation, the sense of self-restraint and creativity of translators,foreignization and domestication.The research findings consist of three parts.First, the restrictive factors include not only the self-restraint ones but multiple exterior ones. Sense of self-restraint is comprised of autonomy and heteronomy with two of them interacting with each other, which promotes or suppresses the play of subjective initiatives and further affects the strategy and translation outcomes.Second, four translators use the translation strategies and methods, among which Goldblatt and Shi Xiaojing have distinct tendency in employing domestication with frequency of occurrences accounting for 74.58% and 68.42% respectively while Evan King’s occurrences of foreignization accounting for 42.21%. No matter how one overweighs the other, they all have certain proportion and are contradictory but compatible with each other in the translation process.Third, there are some gaps between translation theories and practices in China. To be specific, though the foreignization is regarded as the mainstream in the translation circles, especially in the translation circle abroad, domestication remains to be the first option in the real translation practices, which reflects that the translation practice may lag behind on one hand and the translators can hardly resist their translation habits.The innovation points lie in the following two aspects. First, the thesis is written under the guidance of Coordination Translation Theory by Gao Jian(1929-2013). The theory proposed by Gao Jian in 2008, is taken as the framework for the analysis of local Chinese slang translation. It is rooted in ancient Chinese philosophy and caters to the notion of “harmony” in the new times. Second, the research topic is new and comprehensive. The slang in Luotuo Xiangzi is rich in type, including dialect, set phrase,idioms, which are comparatively overall and delicate after redefining the Chinese slang through choosing the data and analyzing the diachronic and synchronic definitions.Hence, no one-sidedness and orientation would be caused in the Chinese slang translations. Meanwhile, compared with the studies on English and American slang,little studies on Chinese slang have been done in terms of researching breadth and depth while the attention to the studies on Chinese slang from the perspective of translation would contribute to an all-round study of Chinese slang.