An Intertextuality Approach To The English Translation Of Laocan Youji

The Intertextuality Theory was first introduced by Julia Kristeva in the 1960 s.Holding the idea that the generation of a text is neither closed nor isolated,she points out that a text will be related with other texts in one way or another and no text can exist without other texts.Every single text is the absorption or transformation of other texts(Kristeva,1980: 66),which integrates Text,Subject with Culture and introduces social,historical and cultural significance into text theory analysis with dynamic,pluralistic and open characteristics,opening a new page for the theoretical and practical study of translation outside of the structuralists' view that the text is isolated and closed.An Intertextuality approach to the English translation of Laocan Youji will be carried out in this thesis.Laocan Youji,the masterpiece of Liu E,who was a famous writer in the Late Qing Dynasty,takes a doctor Lan Can's travels as the thread to expose the clumps of social contradictions in the late Qing Dynasty.Lao Can,unimpressed by power or money,makes his living as a roving doctor not to serve the government but concerns about the destiny of the nation and shows great compassion with the sufferings of common people.His nature of doing boldly with what is righteous and intelligence of distinguishing black and white leads him to criticize the phenomenon of “decent officials” endangering the people so that the poor people can be saved,expressing his long-cherished wish of saving the nation and the people.As the author is ingenious in depicting Chinese national traditional culture,philosophy of life,female aesthetics and magnificent sceneries,he adopts a number of quotations and allusions full of cultural characteristics.From the linguistic point of view,the obvious intertextual features of the novel lie in the author's writing skills.Sometimes he records stories to express feelings,takes objects voicing one's aspirations and narrates past anecdotes to allude the present.His masterful application of metaphors and allusions as well as imitating sentences writing,which not only provide conditions for intertextual intervention but also a new perspective for the English translation of Laocan Youji.Seeing that texts are interrelated and referred to each other,each text is a new texture of past quotations,interweaving into a text network with infinite potentials,thus constituting the social and cultural system of a text.Therefore,the effective translation of intertextual signs in Chinese traditional novel will be conducive to overcome barriers blocked in language conversion,thus further promoting the exchange and dissemination of Chinese culture.Since its publication,Laocan Youji has been well received by readers,gained a lot of attention from some translators,and several English versions have also been successively translated by translators such as Lin Yijin and Ge Deshun.Considering the excellency and integrity of the translation,this present author chooses Harold Shadick's English version of The Travels of Lao Ts' an,a well-known Canadian sinologist,as the research object.The recent years have witnessed an increasing number of researches focusing on English translation of Laocan Youji.However,qualitative and quantitative studies launched on its English translation under the guidance of Intertextuality Theory are still rare.This thesis will use the Intertextuality Theory as a theoretical tool to analyze the translation strategies adopted by translators in dealing with intertextual signs in Laocan Youji both quantitatively and qualitatively.Two main theoretical methods will be adopted in this thesis: Translation Studies and Intertextuality Theory.At the beginning,the translation methods will be discussed in terms of Manifesto Intertextuality and Constituent Intertextuality,a classification of Intertextuality introduced by Norman Fairclough.After that,with a purpose to further buttress the hypothesis of the qualitative analysis,a corpus-based case study with the application of WordSmith 6.0 and AntConc 3.2.5 will be implemented and the data of TTR and Conjunction Usage Frequency of intertextual signs in The Travels of Lao Ts' an and Laocan Youji can be concluded.How the translator deals with the intertextual signs during C-E translation will be directly and intuitively presented,thus to reflect the translation patterns of translators in their translating practice.The thesis is made up of six parts.The introduction will give a brief introduction of the thesis,including the structure,research background and research significance.The first chapter contains a literature review about the previous studies of Laocan Youji and The Travels of Lao Ts' an.The second chapter presents the theoretical framework in this thesis which includes the origin and development of Intertextuality Theory as well as its application and impacts on translation studies.The third chapter opens up with a brief overview of Liu E's Laocan Youji and its English version translated by Harold Shadick.The fourth chapter discusses the translation methods,tendency and effects of the English version of Laocan Youji.A conclusion can be found in the last part.Through the study of the English translation of Laocan Youji,the author finds that in the process of translation,appropriately dealing with Manifesto intertextuality and Constituent Intertextuality is conducive to the translator filling the cultural gaps and creating more readable and acceptable translations in the target language.They are capable to have a more effective recognition of the intertextual signs applied in the source language text and felicitously interpret the intertextual references,to improve the communication effect and realize the dynamic effect of the intertextual symbolic meaning.At the same time,it also provides a new perspective for translation practice and broad application prospects,which deserves further study.