| Pu Songling's Liaozhaizhiyi is an excellent collection of classical short stories in the history of Chinese literature,which is widely known to the Chinese people.What's more,it is also one of the earliest Chinese classical novels that translated into other countries,with numerous foreign versions in about 20 languages.Among these foreign versions,the English version not only has the largest number,but also has achieved the greatest achievement.The translation of Liaozhaizhiyi in the English world can be traced back to 1842,Karl Friedrich August Gutzlaff published his translation and introduction article in Chinese Repository,it has been more than 170 years since then.This thesis intends to describe the English translation process of this great work in the case of five English versions—Karl Friedrich August Gutzlaff's version,Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's versions,Denis C.Mair and Denis C.Mair's version and John Minford's version.This thesis adopts description,text reading and comparative analysis to give a macroscopic description and microcosmic comparison of this five versions.All these is to present the changes of the work in the course of its translation.On the basis of the above content,the thesis also tries to analyze the causes of these translation phenomena.This thesis is mainly divided into five parts.The introduction part is mainly about the history of English translation of Liaozhaizhiyi,a summary of Chinese and foreign studies on the English translation of this work,and an overview of the characteristics of this thesis.From the above description,it is found that there is an imbalance in the study of the English translation of Liaozhaizhiyi,and so far few scholars have systematically described and analyzed the translation phenomenon of this great work in the English world.The first chapter introduces the five English versions of Liaozhaizhiyi from a macro perspective,and gives a brief explanation of their background.Secondly,it makes a study of the paratexts of Liaozhaizhiyi's English versions,which has rarely been touched by scholars,including the cover,titles,prefaces,notes and illustrations.The addition of these paratexts reflects the efforts of translators and publishers to turn Liaozhaizhiyi into a classic.The second chapter inspects the five translators' understanding and interpretation of Liaozhaizhiyi,which mainly includes the interpretation and translation of the title,the adjustment andrewriting of the story plot and the treatment of "Yishishi Comments".After the above study,this paper finds that from Gutzlaff to Minford,the translator's understanding of Liaozhaizhiyi is getting deeper and deeper,and the translation is becoming more and more prominent in its fiction.The third chapter compares the translation strategies of the five versions,mainly through the comparative analysis of the translation strategies of cultural vocabulary and sentences in the five versions.Through a comparative study of the five versions,it can be found that translators pay more and more attention to the cultural connotations of the source of vocabulary translation.What's more,translators also pay more and more attention to translate the concise stylistic style of Liaozhaizhiyi and convey Pu Songling's feelings of "solitary anger" in the lines through various compensatory translations.The fourth chapter mainly analyzes the reasons for the differences between macro and micro aspects in the five versions and finds that the translation of the translator is not in a vacuum,the differences in translation strategies of different translators are influenced by both themselves and the historical and cultural context.Finally,in the conclusion part,the author summarizes the full text,points out the deficiencies,and tries to provide some superficial views for the going out of Chinese literature today. |
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