On The Image Of Wang Qiyao In The English Version Of The Song Of Everlasting Sorrow

Wang Anyi, as the vice chairman of Chinese Writers Association, is one of the most influential and the most accomplished contemporary writers in China. Excellent works, written by Wang Anyi, are published in various periods. Her representative works The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, which receives Mao Dun Literature Awards, tells a story of a Shanghai lady named Wang Qiyao in 40 years. The English version The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A NOVEL OF SHANGHAI was also published by Columbia University in 2008 to which the two translators Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan made a great contribution. However, because of different cultural backgrounds, translators fail to fully and equivalently reflect the information and content of the source text although they try to reproduce, which results readers of target text can not feel the same image of Wang Qiyao as that of the readers of source text.Shanghai lady Wang Qiyao is the representative of Shanghai mentioned by Wang Anyi. Shanghai, one of the coastal cities opening very first in China, is a famous historical and cultural city with profound culture. Shanghai culture is also known as the Shanghai-style Culture. Because of its special geographical location, Shanghai creates the distinctive Shanghai-style Culture on the basis of absorbing and integrating western culture as well as rooted in traditional Chinese culture. This thesis will discuss the image of Wang Qiyao from the influence of western culture, the retention of traditional culture and the embodiment of the indigenous culture. However, there is no completely equivalent translation. Every word we say is created on the spot in different contexts but time is passing. Translators give a new appearance to the source text to enable it to communicate with readers of target text, but target text is different from source text. Literature, communicated between two cultures, encounters the different cultural patterns, which presents variation. Variation is the basic fact of literary and cultural exchanges, so the image of Wang Qiyao in the English version is certain to be permeated with variation.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One introduces research background, research purpose and research significance. Chapter Two is literature review, which presents relevant researches made by domestic and overseas scholars on Wang Qiyao in The Song of Everlasting Sorrow. Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the main parts of this thesis. With examples, Chapter Three demonstrates that the characteristics of Wang Qiyao being fashionable, sacrificed and shrewd in the English version are the reproduction of the Chinese version under the influence of Shanghai-style Culture. Then based on the feminism theory and variation theory, this thesis mainly studies translation strategies adopted by translators in the process of translation which make the image of Wang Qiyao variate under the different cultural backgrounds. Wang Qiyao, in the English version, is active and initiative to pursue love and has the courage to build women alliance so as to get rid of attachment to men to gain independence. Chapter Four summarizes the main reasons why translators consciously or unconsciously make the variation of the image of Wang Qiyao. Chapter Five, as a conclusion, briefly summarizes the content mentioned above.