On The Discourse Translation Of Fictional Characters

The Great Gatsby,the masterpiece of American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald,has been researched and spread in China for a long time.The character discourse translation in the novel is an important part of literary translation,and,to a certain degree,determines the quality of literary translation.However,while reading the Chinese versions,the writer of this thesis finds that there exists much mismatching between characters' identity,social status and education and their discourses.Different translators follow different translation strategies and methods that in turn result in different translations of the same discourse.Which version is more appropriate and whether the matching between characters and their discourses should be taken into consideration while making translating choice? With this question,the author carries out a literature review of the previous research on character discourse translation,which shows that although scholars have given different translation strategies and methods from different theoretical perspectives,the following questions almost remain untouched: Among the various translations of the same fictional character discourse,which one is better,or more exactly,which one can better echo the original voice? Nor did they notice the mismatching between characters and their discourses.Therefore,the author attempts to analyze the translation choice of the fictional character discourse against the backdrop of Chinese culture “going out”.Guided by Grice's cooperative principle,the writer of this thesis makes a detailed analysis of the literariness resulting from the compliance and violation of the cooperative principle in the original text.Measured by the standard to reproduce the original literariness,only the version which faithfully reflects the compliance and violation of the cooperative principle in the original text is the better one.In other words,the quality of the different translations resulting from different translation strategies and methods guided by different theoretical perspectives cannot be the same when measured by the standard of literariness reproduction.Therefore,the more appropriate translation resulting from more appropriate translation strategies and methods should be the one which contains higher degree of matching between characters and their discourses and which shows more appropriateness in: who,in which way,says what on what occasion in Chinese.