Potential Effect Of A Literary Title:a Comparative Study Of The Great Gatsby And Its Chinese Translations

Titles could either be the departure of a work,or the guide for readers’ interpretation.Structurally or aesthetically,a title bears undeniable significance for a literary work.From the perspective of readers,a title appears to be linguistic symbols with meaning,which delivers information to readers and guides their reading of the whole work.Within the context of translation,the significance of titles cannot be denied either.When a literary work enters another language,its title may determine its first impression on readers.It is not uncommon in literary production that an original title sees different versions in one single target language.These versions differ in the linguistic presence,including orthographical,phonological,semantic,grammatical dimensions,etc.Such differences lead to different interpretation from readers,and in other words,these translated titles can cause different impacts on readers’ reading experience.Such differences are caused on the cognitive level in the reading act,which deserves further exploration,and so do the reasons behind these differences.With the intention to discuss the different effect caused by the original title and the translated titles on readers,this thesis analyze the English title The Great Gatsby and its four Chinese titles,that is,大亨小传(Da Heng Xiao Zhuan),了不起的盖茨比(Liao Bu Qi De Gai Ci Bi),长岛春梦(Chang Dao Chun Meng),and 灯红酒绿(Deng Hong Jiu Lv),at the conceptual,contextual,and intertextual levels.After the analysis,this thesis makes a comparative study between the original title and its Chinese versions in terms of the potential effect caused in the reading act and discusses the reasons behind their different effect.The discussion results are presented as follows:(a)the conceptual reading:the uniqueness presented by the in The Great Gatsby is absent in the Chinese titles;(b)the contextual reading:the original title and its Chinese versions show different focuses of the original novel,which will lead to divergent interpretation of the theme of the novel;(c)the intertextual reading:the culture-specific associations evoked by these titles are different.The possible reasons behind these differences are attributed to the cultural differences which are displayed in several dimensions,including linguistic disparity,literary conventions,and social and historical backgrounds.