A Research On The Reproduction Of Style In Translation

Style translation has been a focus in literary translation for a long time. It is one of the most significant criteria for appreciating the translation quality that the translated text is similar or equivalent in style to the the original text. Traditional literary criticism is too impressionistic and subjective to effectively evaluate the style of literary works, thus contributing little to the assessment of translation quality. Whereas, literary stylistics, focusing on a systematic description and analysis of the foregrounding features in a given text, proves to be of great benefit for translators to guide his or her translation practices and for translation critics to evaluate the translation quality of a literary text.Leech and Short propose a checklist of literary stylistic analysis, namely lexical categories, grammatical categories, figures of speech, and cohesion and context. Based on Leech and Short’s checklist, this thesis explores the reproduction of the style of the original text from these four categories, with a case study of Lin Yutang’s translated version of Fu Sheng Liu Ji.Fu Sheng Liu Ji (浮生六记) is an autobiographic story written by Shen Fu of Qing Dynasty. Regarded as one of Chinese classics, it has been translated into various languages, among which Lin Yutang’s English version is the most widely acclaimed. He manages to reproduce to the utmost the familiar style of the original text in his translation. Inspired by Hazzlitt’s and Lin Yutang’s exposition, this thesis makes a detailed analysis of the familiar style features of Fu Sheng Liu Ji and conducts a research on the reproduction of the familiar style in Lin’s translation through a detailed analysis of the foregrounding features based on Leech and Short’s four categories of stylistic analysis.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter one introduces the research origin, research significance and the general structure of the thesis. Chapter two reviews the previous translation studies on Lin’s translated version of FSLJ and the previous studies of the application of literary stylistics in translation studies. Chapter three lays its emphasis on the theoretical foundation of this thesis. It introduces style and its translatability and Leech and short’s literary stylistic ideas and their checklist of four categories of stylistic analysis. Chapter four involves the introduction of Shen Fu and his Fu Sheng Liu Ji, Lin Yutang and his translated version Six Chapters of a Floating Life as well as the familiar style features of Fu Sheng Liu Ji. Chapter five is the core of this thesis. Based on Leech and Short’s checklist of linguistic and stylistic categories, it aims at the detailed analysis of the reproduction of familiar style with the case study of Lin’s translated version. Chapter six draws a conclusion of the thesis, including the summary of the research content, the findings and limitations of the research.To draw a conclusion, this thesis conducts an analysis of the reproduction of style in translated work from the perspective of literary stylistics, with a case study of Lin Yutang’s translated version of Fu Sheng Liu Ji, in order to demonstrate the necessity and importance of applying literary stylistics in fictional translation.