| As a universally acknowledged literary master,William Faulkner creates many great works with wonderful language which has its own characteristics.Today lots of his works are still liked by a huge number of literary lovers in China.His masterpiece,Light in August has been the focus of research since it was translated into China.However,unlike the prosperity of studies on Faulkner,research on his language characteristics or translations of them is rare to see.Hence,taking Faulkner’s language characteristics as the starting point,this thesis made a case study of the source text of Light in August and its two Chinese versions of Lan Renzhe and Huo Yanjing,with the aim of displaying the specifications of Faulkner’s language characteristics existing on various aspects,and examining how the two translators represent them in their own Chinese versions.It is found that Faulkner continues his language characteristics in Light in August.He used unique compound words consisting mainly of compound adjectives and nouns created based on rules of word formation to compact structures and reduce redundant words;he utilized complicated long sentences in most descriptive sections to explain the objects he described to readers as clearly as possible;he took advantage of personal characters’ language,such as the spoken language,Black English,vulgar words and humor and sarcasm to create vivid and well-rounded characters;and he applied wonderful metaphors to make the meaning or things become more living and concrete,thus leaving a deep impression on readers.Through the detailed and systematic comparison between the source text and target texts,and the two target texts,respectively,it is discovered that there are similarities and differences between them in representing Faulkner’s language characteristics of four aspects.For the compound words,overall,both Lan and Huo represented them in their own versions by changing the part of speech of one component of them and gained good effects,but in some cases,Huo did not translate these words,thus making their characteristics lost in her version.For Faulkner’s complicated long sentences,from the aspect of their structures,Lan maintained them by reproducing the original long sentences into the translated version and using some semicolons to cut them based on the meaning,which has not only represented Faulkner’s characteristic of long sentences well but also let the meaning of them clearer,while Huo always cut one long sentence into several sentences by using periods,thus making the characteristic lost.In terms of meaning,both Lan and Huo hold the main points.As for the personal characters’ language,things are a bit complicated.For the Black English,because of the differences between Chinese and English – English is a kind of morphological language which could express different meaning through changes in the forms of words,but Chinese cannot do this – translators have to amend in order to express the correct meaning in Chinese.Therefore,the features of Black English have not represented in the chosen versions.For the spoken languages,Lan represented them well,while Huo did not.And for the vulgar words and humor and sarcasm,overall,both Lan and Huo represented them well.As regards the living metaphors,both Lan and Huo commendably represented them.In conclusion,Lan has paid much attention to Faulkner’s language characteristics during the translation process and done a good job,while Huo has not done so well in some aspects.In the end,this contrastive analysis is expected to broaden studies on Faulkner’s language characteristics and Light in August. |
