A Literary Stylistics Approach To Two English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi

Driven by the rapid development of Chinese literature’s “going out”,the translation of Chinese classic works plays an increasingly important role in intercultural communication.It accordingly promotes the study on the literary value reproduction that lies in form and content.However,there is no final word that which one is more important.In tradition,translators attach great importance to the reproduction of content instead of form and style features while scholars always release impressionistic comments and subjective analysis.The remedy will be sought in literary stylistics,a new discipline combining linguistics and literary criticism to explore how the author’s verbal choices convey the thematic meaning and aesthetic effect of the source text.As Lao She’s magnum opus salient of stylistic markers,Luotuo Xiangzi is acknowledged as one of the best works of modern Chinese fiction written.Owing to its great literary and social significance,scholars have conducted numerous studies on it and its English versions.However,most studies are comparative studies of Evan King’s and Shi Xiaojing’s version from the perspectives of Power Discourse Theory,Functional Translational Theory,Skopos Theory and so on.Thus,this thesis attempts to find out how a translator represents the original flavor and how a his translation notion affects his choices by virtue of a comparative analysis of Shi Xiaojing’s version and Goldblatt’s version based on the stylistic theories proposed by Leech and Short and many other stylisticians,.Through a systemic study,we conclude that they both to some extent represent the original flavor.However,Shi Xiaojing emphasizes the accurate reproduction of content,and accordingly gives up some stylistic features.Yet,Goldblatt pursues the reproduction of both content and form,which contributes to his faithful style reproduction.But his cultural background restricts his understanding of the source text.The author hopes that this thesis will provide some guidance for literary criticism,especially fiction criticism based on literary stylistics.