Comparison Of Two English Versions Of Luotuo Xiangzi From The Perspective Of Polysystem Theory

Luotuo Xiangzi is a famous novel written by Lao She,which describes the tragic fate of rickshaw man Xiangzi during the chaos of the warlord era in the 1920 s.This thesis chooses to compare the novel's two English versions by Lynette Shi and Howard Goldblatt from polysystematic viewpoint,to analyze the historical and cultural causes for their different choices of translation strategies,and how that are revealed in their different choices of words,sentence structures and equivalences for idiomatic expression.Polysystem was proposed by Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar.It is a series of different but interconnected and interdependent systems that constitute the social semiotic phenomena such as literature and culture.Each system has its own central and peripheral system,both of which compete for the dominant position,making the polysystem a dynamic one rather than a static one.The fact that Luotuo Xiangzi has more than one English versions has proved that translated literature is constantly moving toward the center position,attracting translators to introduce it into their literary polysystem.It is a result of combined influence from historical and cultural polysystems.Different translation strategies adopted in the two versions are just a manifestation of the changes of the center and peripheral positions of the above mentioned two polysystems.Lynette Shi chose to adopt the foreignization strategy to best preserve cultural characteristics demonstrated in the work,which could be counted as an attempt to drive translated literature to the central position;while Howard Goldblatt chose domestication for he put acceptability to English readers as the top priority,which at the same time showed his intention to preserve the central position for home literature.This thesis chooses the descriptive method to compare their different strategies,so as to conclude that translation is an activity which is not merely a transfer of literary works form one language to another,but an activity that is influenced by extra-textual factors such as history and culture traditions.