On The Translation Of The Descriptive Language Of Mad Figures In Yang’s The Scholars

The Scholars, written by Wu Jinzi of Qing Dynasty, is known as one of the greatest satire novels in the history of Chinese literature. Hundreds of characters are depicted in this novel, especially mad figures distorted and alienated by feudal ethics and imperial examination system. Chinese scholars are among the latecomers to the introduction and research on madness, but pay much attention to it. Among the studies, Foucault’s madness theory is applied into the analysis of mad figures in literature works especially western literature works. Case study on the translation of the descriptive language of the mad speeches and behaviors of mad figures is still in its infancy. Taking Nida’s Functional Equivalence theory as the theoretical framework, this research attempts to investigate the descriptive language of the speeches and behaviors of mad figures in The Scholars and its English translation in it based on the madness concept of Foucault. This research aims to demonstrate that functional equivalence should be achieved by translators when they translate the descriptive language of mad speeches and behaviors of mad figures in literature from a new perspective.The present thesis finds that: Fan Jin is a self-attached and blind madman and Zhou Jin is a false madman; the descriptive language of mad figures in The Scholars is mainly displayed by four aspects: the description of self-attached and blind mad figures and false mad figures; functional equivalence is not achieved when Yang translates the descriptive language of mad figures mainly. The research results suggest that the translator should try his best to achieve the equivalence in terms of lexical meaning, grammatical meaning and rhetorical meaning when he translates the descriptive language of mad figures. The study also proves that in order to transfer mad figures in the source text, to achieve the “closet natural equivalence” is critical when a translator intends to transfer a mad figure of the source text into target text and makes the target readers understand and appreciate the mad figures as the original readers do.