A Comparative Study On The Reproduction Of Defamiliarization Devices In Chinese Translations Of Lolita

Lolita,as the masterpiece of Vladimir Nabokov,the famous Russian American writer,is regarded as one of the best novels in the 20 th century.Nabokov deliberately violates language norms,making defamiliarization devices the most remarkable linguistic feature in Lolita.First published in 1955,Lolita boasts over 20 Chinese versions,but studies on its translations are scarce,studies focusing on linguistic features of its translations are even scarcer.What are the most distinctive linguistic features of Lolita? How do translators in different periods reproduce these linguistic features? How are the reproduction effects? These questions have not been well solved.The thesis,with the reproduction of defamiliarization devices as the point of penetration,intends to conduct an in-depth study on the linguistic features of Lolita and its translation to highlight the unique linguistic charm of Lolita.The thesis takes three Chinese translations of Lolita as its research objects,namely,Huang Jianren’s translation in 1989,Yu Xiaodan’s translation in 2000,and Zhu Wan’s translation in 2005.Based on Methodology of Complete Translation,it comparatively examines translation strategies,translation methods,and techniques of defamiliarization devices in the three Chinese translations of Lolita,and finally assesses the reproduction effects of selected examples based on the Defamiliarization Theory.The study categorizes prominent defamiliarization devices in Lolita into four levels,including malapropism,alliteration,ending rhyme and spoonerism at phonological level;coinage and oxymoron at lexical level;parallel structures,prolonged distance between sentence elements and broken sentences at syntactic level;the mixture of languages and registers,and shift in narrative perspective at textual level.The results analysis indicates obvious changes in translation strategies,translation methods,and translation techniques in reproducing defamiliarization devices and significantly improved reproduction effects of defamiliarization devices.In terms of translation strategies and methods,the three translations present an obvious transition from domestication to foreignization and from free translation to literal translation.In terms of translation techniques,Huang Jianren’s translation in1989 tends to add,delete or transform the defamiliarization devices of the original text.Although Yu Xiaodan’s translation in 2000 also adds or deletes some of the defamiliarization devices,it begins to use equivalent translation to retain the defamiliarization form of the original text.Zhu Wan’s translation mostly adopts equivalent translation,along with transplanting and annotating to reproduce the defamiliarization form of the original text,reproducing the defamiliarization effect while conveying the meaning of the original text.On the whole,from Huang Jianren’s translation to Zhu Wan’s translation,translation techniques in reproducing defamiliarization devices have changed from adding,deleting,or transforming to equivalent translation,and reproduction effects have improved significantly.As a comparative study on the reproduction of defamiliarization devices,the thesis is aimed at enabling scholars and translators to understand the changes in translation strategies,translation methods and techniques of defamiliarization devices in literary translation in different periods by providing a clear picture of it.Meanwhile,it also intends to bring defamiliarization devices of literary works to public attention,as well as their translation strategies and translation methods,and encourage more translators to participate in reproducing defamiliarization devices,thus enabling readers to better perceive the linguistic features and literariness of the original text.