A Study Of The Plum Inlhe Golden Vase From The Perspective Of Thick Translation

The Plum in the Golden Vase, translated by David Tod Roy, is the latest five-volume English rendition of the novel Chin P’ing Mei, with its fifth and final volume published recently in2013. An achievement of thirty years’endeavor, it is considered by far the most complete translation of the novel. Preserving the properties of the original to the utmost through its extensive use of annotations, this rendition is a vivid manifestation of the so-called "thick translation".Thick translation, proposed by Kwame Anthony Appiah in his essay "Thick Translation" in1993, is a mode of translation in which the translator seeks with annotations and accompanying glosses to situate the readers into a rich cultural and linguistic context. The purpose of such an approach is to draw target readers to the source text and to engender in them a deeper respect for the source culture and greater appreciation for the way that people of other backgrounds have thought and expressed themselves. It is of great significance to literary translation, especially the translation of traditional literature classics.From such a perspective, this thesis attempts to explore the characteristics represented in The Plum in the Golden Vase by giving a close examination to its extensive annotations and comparing it with Egerton’s translation. The study indicates that the annotations in The Plum in the Golden Vase are mostly placed on what Roy believes are "quoted materials", and the way Roy makes annotations is chiefly tracing the sources of these materials and listing their earlier occurrences in other Chinese vernacular literature. Unlike Roy’s translation, Egerton’s contains few notes and assumes great alterations from the source text in terms of poems and chapter titles. In comparison, The Plum in the Golden Vase demonstrates Roy’s conscientious effort to preserve both the content and formalistic features of the Chinese original.