A Study Of Li Jihong’s Chinese Version Of The Kite Runner From The Perspective Of The Optimizing Theory

The Kite Runner,the first novel of the Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini,was published in America in 2003,and brought sensations at home and abroad.The simplified Chinese version of The Kite Runner was introduced into China in 2006 by a young translator called Li Jihong,and won great popularity among Chinese readers.By2014,it has been reprinted for 61 times and sold more than millions of copies.However,up to now,most studies on this novel have been conducted from literary perspectives,while little attention is paid to its translation.The optimizing theory,also called the “theory of advantage”,was first put forward by Xu Yuanchong in 1981.It advocates making full use of the good expressions of the target language to make readers“understand,enjoy and delight in the translated text”.And “the good expressions of the target language”,according to Xu Yuanchong,mainly refer to those that conform to the characteristics or specialty of Chinese.Li Jihong’s Chinese version of The Kite Runner sells quite well and attracts millions of readers.In this respect,it can be said that readers delight in reading Li’s version,which,besides the inner factors of this novel,also owes to Li’s idiomatic translation.Therefore,this thesis aims to study Li Jihong’s Chinese version of The Kite Runner from theperspective of the optimizing theory.The thesis firstly elaborates on the optimizing theory from aspects of its formation,content and positive significance and then analyzes Li Jihong’s Chinese version of The Kite Runner from three levels: lexical level,syntactic level and textual level,with an aim to explore whether he has made full use of the expressions that conform to the characteristics of Chinese to optimize his translation.Through the analysis,it is found that Li Jihong has adopted corresponding optimizing strategies at all the three levels.At the lexical level,he appropriately uses reduplicated words,classical Chinese expressions like four-character constructions,and renders some nouns and prepositions into verbs;at syntactic level,he properly turns some passive sentences into active ones,complex sentences into simple ones and impersonal subject sentences into personal ones;at the textual level,he emphasizes the cohesive devices of repetition and ellipsis.The present thesis not only provides a new perspective for the study of Li Jihong’s Chinese version of The Kite Runner,but also offers reference for other relevant translation practice.