A Comparative Study Of Poem Translations Between Two English Versions Of Xi You Ji From The Perspective Of Thick Translation

In the new era of cultural diversity,China is making more efforts to conform to the demands of the time,improve the cultural soft power,and enable excellent traditional culture to "go abroad".The translations of traditional cultural classics play a vital role in cultural output.As one of the four greatest masterpieces in Chinese literature,Xi You Ji abounds with traditional Chinese cultural elements and special literary charm,which has obtained an irreplaceable position in the history of Chinese literature and even world literature.Among its so many English versions,there are only two full-length English versions-Yu‘s and Jenner‘s translations.This thesis focuses on the comparative study of poem translations between these two English versions from the perspective of thick translation,and attempts to justify their differences.The notion of "thick translation" was put forward in 1993 by an American scholar called Kwame Anthony Appiah in his essay Thick Translation.This assertion seeks with its annotations and accompanying glosses to locate the text in a rich cultural and linguistic context.It aims to provide target readers with the background knowledge and information to facilitate the understanding of the original text.This theory is proven to be quite applicable to literary translation,especially to the translations of traditional literary works.After the comparative study,this thesis finds that: 1)both translators translate poems line by line in accordance with the original text and they don‘t redraw their paragraphs,so the main manifestation of thick translation in Yu‘s and Jenner‘s poem translations is explanatory endnotes;2)there is a big difference in the number of their endnotes.546 endnotes exist in Yu‘s poem translations and only twenty-one endnotes exist in Jenner‘s.In addition,levels of specification of their endnotes are also different from each other.Yu‘s endnotes are usually a combination of the background knowledge,characteristics knowledge and the index information,while Jenner‘s endnotes are relatively simple;3)there are three main causes that result in the differences of the application of thick translation.Besides the different ideologies and cultural orientations of the two translators,their purposes are also different.Yu aims to introduce the Chinese culture to the western world,but Jenner hopes that western readers can get some of the pleasure from Journey to the West.