《水浒传》两英译本中汉语俗语的翻译策略的对比研究

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background
With  the  rapid  development  of  the  global  economics  and  cultural communication,  the  communication  of  people  in  the  world  is  becoming  more  and more frequent. Culture is the main content of people’s communication. However, the communication among people is very difficult because of the different cultures. And translation  can  help  people,  who  are  with  different  cultural  backgrounds, communicate  with  each  other.  The  translation  of  literature  works  assume  the responsibility  that  helps  people  communicate  with  each  other.  The  translation  of literature works is not only to introduce a literature work to the overseas, but also to spread the national culture.   As  one  of  the  most  famous  classic  masterpieces  in  ancient  China  and  the milestone of Chinese ancient literary history, Shui Hu Zhuan not only implies dense Chinese  ancient  culture  and  profound  ideology,  but  also  is  regarded  as  the  best masterpiece used common language. A gret number of  common sayings are used by its  author  in  this  masterpiece,  and  these  common  sayings  have  the  unique  Chinese cultural characteristics , which are used by people now. Common sayings are created by  Chinese  people  in  daily  life,  and  handed  down  through  oral  language.  These common sayings are created by working people and reflect their life experience and their dreams. Common sayings  contain many Chinese unique culture or convention. This masterpiece uses the oral language. The Chinese common sayings are lively and vivid, and impressive. Whether the foreign readers can understand the Chinese unique elements  or  not  in  this masterpiece  depends  on  how  these  translators  translate  these Chinese  common  sayings.  Therefore,  under  the  condition  that  the  world  is diminishing,  the  translation  of  Chinese  literature  is  an  important  work  to  spread Chinese culture. And the translation of Chinese common sayings is a great challenge for  translators.  So  the  study  of  how  to  translate  Chinese  common  sayings  is  very helpful for the future translation. 
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1.2 Significance of the Research
With the rapid development of the globalization, the communication among people in  the  world  becomes  more  and  more  frequent.  And  language,  as  the  product  of human’s activity, is the main content of their communication. However, the different culture may be the obstacle of people’s communication because of the differences of different culture. And how to solve this problem is our task which determines whether we can communicate further.  Language reflects culture. Language is not only the carrier of culture, but also the tool  to  communicate  with  other  cultures.  And  translation  can  be  the  bridge  among different cultures. From  the  ancient  time  to  now,  translation  is  the  main  means  to  help  people  with different cultural backgrounds communicate with each other. And Shui Hu Zhuan, as one of the most famous classic masterpieces in ancient China, not only has a profound and lasting influence on Chinese society, but also  is  translated into English, French, Russian,  German,  and  Japanese  and  so  on.  This  masterpiece  has  become  a  work which is valued by all the world in 20th century. Scholars have not paid attention to studying the original work, but also begun to make researches on its translations. The English versions of  Shui Hu Zhuan help spread the Chinese ancient literature to the English  world  and  make  a  prominent  contribution.  This  masterpiece  used  many Chinese  common  sayings.  The  Chinese  common  sayings  contains  many  Chinese elements. And the translation of them could spread the Chinese culture and let other cultures know Chinese culture.
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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Studies on Chinese Common Sayings
Chinese  common  sayings  is  a  broad  conception.  And  there  are  different attitudes  to  the  definition  of  Chinese  common  sayings.  This  thesis  takes  the opinion  in  The  Study  of  Chinese  Common  Sayings  in  20th  Century:  common sayings  is  a  common  language  popular  among  the  people,  which  contains proverbs,  idioms  and  a  two-part  allegorical  sayings(Wen  Duanzheng,2004). Chinese  common  sayings  is  created  by  Chinese  people  in  daily  life,  and  it  is passed  down  through  oral  language.  These  common  sayings  are  created  by working  people  and  reflect  their  life  experience  and  their  dreams.  Common sayings contain many Chinese unique culture or convention. They are the results of working people’s wisdom and experiences in production and life.  
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2.2 Studies on Shui Hu Zhuan
Shui Hu Zhuan, as one of the most famous classic masterpieces in ancient China, plays a very important role in the literary field. Many scholars study this famous work from various perspectives. There are many scholars in ancient China who studied Shui Hu Zhuan.  The first scholar who studied Shui Hu Zhuan is Qian Gezhuan. In his book, Basic Knowledge of  Translation,  he  listed  Pearl’s  translation  of  “fangpi”  as  an  example  of mistranslation.  And  then  pearl’s  version  is  regarded  as  “cultural trap”, ”misreading”, ”mistranslation”, ”over translation”, ”dead translation” and so on. Those  articles  are limited to the negative attitude to Pearl’s translation or quote  the Pearl’s translation as a translation example. Since 2003, there appear more articles about the study of English translation versions of Shui Hu Zhuan, which indicates the limitations  of  the  study  of  the  English  translation  versions  of  Shui  Hu  Zhuan  have been  broken  down.  These  articles  can  be  divided  into  two  kinds,  the  study  of  its content and the study from linguistic level. Many  scholars  study  Shui  Hu  Zhuan  from  the  perspective  of  content,  such  as nicknames, some word, place names, titles, cultural communication and so on. In Xu Xueping’s(2001) essay, On Shapiro’s Translation of the Marsh Heroes’ Nicknames, he  studied  the  problems  of  the  translation  of  nicknames  in  Shapiro’s  translation version  from  the  cross-cultural  perspective.  He  mainly  analyzed  the  unsuitable translation of these heroes’ nicknames. The same as Xu Xueping, Guo Mei and Yi Ge(2006) studied these heroes’ nicknames of the three English translation versions of Shui Hu Zhuan in their paper Comparative Study of Three English Versions of Shui Hu  Zhuan,  which  made  the  comparative  study  by  analyzing  the  mistranslation  in Pearl’s version. Chen Zhijin listed considerable examples of the translation of “chi” to criticize the missing translation of “chi” in Pearl’s version(Cheng Zhijing，，2003). 
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Chapter Three The Theoretical Framework and Research Methodology....... 13 
3.1The Theoretical Framework ....... 13 
3.1.1 Lawrence Venuti’s theory of Foreignization and Domestication .... 13 
3.2 The Research Methodology ....... 16 
Chapter Four Comparative Studies of Pearl’s and Shapiro’s Translation Versions ...... 17 
4.1 Comparative Studies on Translation of  Basic Necessity ....... 17 
4.2 Comparative Studies on Translation of Social Life ...... 28 
4.3 Comparative Studies on Translation of Spiritual Life ....... 41 
4.3.1 Common Sayings of Funeral .... 41 
4.3.2 Common Sayings of Religious Belief ..... 42 
Chapter Five Conclusion ..... 45 
5.1 Summary of the Study ..... 45 
5.2 Limitations of the Study ....... 46 
5.3 Implications ...... 47 
5.4 Suggestions for Further Research ........ 47

Chapter Four Comparative Studies of Pearl’s and Shapiro’s Translation Versions 

The  common  sayings  belongs  to  language,  and  language  itself  is  a  kind  of particular  phenomenon.  Language  reflects  various  cultural  phenomena  in  life  of  the nation, and the cultural information of a language is conveyed mostly by vocabularies (especially  common  sayings)  which  store  and  reflect  the  main  part  of  cultural information. The common sayings keep a record of human’s material and cultural life, and is passed on generation by generation. The common sayings are called the “living fossil  of  human  history  and  culture”.  It  is  difficult  for  translators  to  translate  them accurately and deliver the true intention of the original work precisely. Pearl’s version and Shapiro’s version are the two representatives of the English versions of Shui Hu Zhuan. And we make a contrastive analysis on the translation of the Chinese common sayings  to  see  what  translation  strategies  Pearl  and  Shapiro  used  to  deal  with  these common  sayings.  In  the  following  part,  the  common  sayings  are  divided  into  three groups,  common  sayings  on  the  basic  necessity,  common  sayings  on  the  social production, common sayings on the spiritual life. 
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Conclusion

This  thesis  analyzes  what  translation  strategies  used  in  Shui  Hu  Zhuan, domestication  or  foreignization.  In  this  thesis,  45  examples  of  Chinese  common sayings  are  selected  to  make  this  comparative  study.  Foreignization  takes  up  three quarters in Pearl’s version and three fifths in Shapiro’s version, which shows that they used  both  foreignization  and  domestication  strategy  in  their  translation  and foreignization plays a more important role. The use of foreignization could deliver the characteristics of foreign culture and custom, but could not make readers understand clearly  in  some  different  cultural  situations.  It  is  necessary  to  use  domestication  to make  the  meaning  clear.  And  in  Pearl’s  and  Shapiro’s  versions,  the  use  of domestication  occupies  one  quarter  and  two  fifths  respectively,  which  indicates  the two translators use the two translation strategies in translating this work. Only using foreignization would puzzle the readers in some particular cultural situation. Then the use of domestication would make up for it. The two strategies are complementary and interdependent,  which  could  be  used  in  one  work.  Foreignization  could  show  the feature of source language  and domestication could deliver the correct meaning and let readers know the culture deeply.    
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The reference (omitted)