ABSTRACT
Thomas Hardy is regarded as both a major novelist and a prominent poet duringthe transitional period of the 19thcentury to the 20thcentury. He is most famous for his“Novels of Characters and Environment”, which gains him worldwide reputation. TheReturn of the Native is a representative one of this series.
The Return of the Native is regarded as Hardy's first tragic novel in which thecharacters' fates are closely related to the natural environment. As a nature-lover,Thomas Hardy frequently expresses his deep concern towards nature in this novel andappeals to construct a harmonious relationship between man and nature. His ecologicalthoughts embodied in The Return of the Native are in accordance with the ideas ofecocriticism. To put it briefly, ecocriticism is a newly-emerged literary criticismconcerning the relationship between man and nature in literary works. The intrinsicvalue of nature and ecological holism are its core concepts. This theory argues for theintrinsic value of nature, regards both man and nature as the indispensable componentsof the whole ecological system, maintaining that both enjoy the same rights and havethe same status. Namely, man and nature are integrated together in one eco-system.
Thus, one cannot separate himself from the natural environment.
This thesis is to employ the theory of ecocriticism to interpret The Return of theNative. Besides the Introduction and Conclusion parts, the main body of this thesisfalls into four chapters. In the first chapter, the thesis sorts out previous studies of thisnovel both at home and abroad. The second chapter gives an overview of the theory ofecocriticism as the theoretical basis of this thesis. The third chapter focuses on thedisharmonious aspects as represented in the novel and brings out the ecologicalthoughts embodied within. In the light of ecological holism, the last chapter mainlydeals with text analysis with emphasis on the detailed depictions of the harmoniousnatural world, wherein man and nature fuse into one.
In The Return of the Native, nature is full of vigor, vitality and mysteries. Itpossesses intrinsic values, independent from human wills. In Hardy's writing, all thenatural things are human-like figures and have important symbolic meanings. EgdonHeath is depicted as possessing a kind of mysterious power, manipulating thecharacter's fate. Besides, the relationship between man and nature as demonstrated inthe novel has its deep historical background. The invasion of industrialization not onlydisharmonizes the man-nature relationship but also distorts the man-man relationship.
The characters in the novel who alienate themselves from nature end up with tragedywhile those who can keep a harmonious relationship with nature finally get a happyending. In a sense, the characters' different lots in life can be seen as a kind ofmetaphorical expression of the relationship between man and nature.
In an age of increasing outbreaks of serious ecological crisis, great importanceshould be attached to the relationship between man and nature. Thus, by interpretingThe Return of the Native from the perspective of ecocriticism, this thesis aims toexplore the ecological consciousness embodied in the novel and hopes to call on aholistic view in dealing with man-and-nature relationship.
ABSTRACT
The material of this interpretation project is the report on 2014 Obama's State ofdie Union Address held by US government and delivered by US president Obama inWashington on 了肌28气 2014. Having conducted an E-C simulated consecutiveinterpreting, the interpreter notices that frequent usage of parenthesis notably detectedin the text can cause the following problems: （1） the miss of parentheses can lead tounderstanding difficulty. That is to say, the parentheses heard are merely some clipswhich lack logical connection with the whole sentence; （2） time-lag of the parentiiesescan also result in logical incoherence during inteipreting. The interpreter can fullyunderstand exact meaning of the original material but fails to interpret perfectly due tothe fact that the speaker frequently makes replenishment or paraphrase for theprevious contents.
Under the guidance of interpretive tfieoiy with “deverbalization” being its core,this paper has explored effective strategies for solving the problems: prediction byinference and information simplification to solve the first one; reformulation andlogical processing being helpful to solve tihe second one. The completion of this papercan help to cultivate the author's interpreting competence as well as performance inthe fiiture.
ABSTRACT
According to Lefevere, translation is rewriting of the source text. All rewritingsmanifest a certain ideology and poetics which manipulate or influence literary worksto function in a given society in a given way. Translators always change the originaltexts to some extent so as to comply with the mainstream ideology and poetics. Onlyin this way can the translated version pass the official inspection smoothly and beaccepted by most readers.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter has long been considered as aclassic both at home and abroad. Published in 1850, the novel tells the story about theprotagonist Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair andtries hard to start a new life of regret and dignity. Due to its important position in thehistory of world literature, it has already been translated into many different kinds offoreign languages. According to the materials available, there are up to 34 differentChinese versions. The present study attempts to make a comparative study of twoChinese versions （Han Shiheng's version in 1954 and Yao Naiqiang's version in 1996）of The Scarlet Letter from the perspective of Manipulation Theory.
Through comparison, this thesis holds that ideology and poetics in differenthistorical times influence translators' philosophy of translation and their translationstrategies. For the same original work to be translated, translators of different timestend to have obvious differences in the selection of lexicon, syntax and even the textstructure. Han's version manifests more about the manipulation of political ideologythan Yao's version. But in Yao's version, the trace of socialist ideology is not thatobvious since this version came out under the spring breeze of reform and opening-uppolicy blowing across the country. Owing to the different periods of time governed bytheir ideology and poetics, Han and Yao tend to translate The Scarlet Letter differentlyin text making. In terms of the average sentence length, Han's version is longer thanYao's, indicating that Han adopts to take the literal translation strategy while Yao isinclined to use free translation strategy. At the structural level, Han deletes the prefacewhile Yao retains it, which can be inferred that the poetics factors, including thechanged status of American literature and scholars' views on the significance of thepreface play an important role in translation.
Besides the Introduction and Conclusion parts, the present thesis is composed ofthree chapters. The first chapter is the literature review concerned with The ScarletLetter and its translation. Chapter Two introduces the theoretical foundation of thestudy – the Manipulation Theory. Chapter Three is the main part of the thesis,analyzing the two Chinese versions of The Scarlet Letter from the perspective ofManipulation Theory, and explaining the different translation strategies adopted bythe translators.
ABSTRACT
Science fiction, formerly called scientific romance, or science fantasy, is a distinctgenre of literature imported from the Western countries and came into being in the LateQing Dynasty（1872-1911） as a means of national salvation and mass education. From1900 to 1911, the translated science fiction, outnumbering the created ones, made astrong impact on the domestic science fiction creation. This thesis attempts toinvestigate the translation norms of science fiction translations in the late Qing Dynastyin the light of Toury's translation norm theory. Based on Toury's translation norm theory,the thesis attempts to explore the social-cultural factors that governed the translationactivity macroscopically and investigate the operational norms followed by thetranslators at each stage of translation process microscopically.
Besides Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis consists of three chapters. ChapterOne is the literature review on the fiction translation studies in the Late Qing Dynastyand the translation studies of science fiction both at home and abroad; Chapter Twogives a general overview of Toury's norm theory, constituting the theoretical foundation;Chapter Three is the main body, studying the translation of science fiction in the LateQing Dynasty on the basis of Toury's norm theory.
Through the investigation of the preliminary norms, the thesis finds out that thechoices made by the science fiction translators were mostly restricted by the targetculture norms. It is the actual need in the target culture that determines whether or not aforeign science fiction will be translated in the Late Qing Dynasty. The intrinsic valueor the artistic side of the text seems to be of little significance. Besides, through theinvestigation of the directness of translation, the present author finds that nearly onefourth of the 108 science fiction translations were translated through the medium ofJapanese versions because of the translators' eagerness to learn from the Japanesesuccess and the language affinity of both Chinese and Japanese languages. Thereforetranslated science fictions with the Japanese language as the medium dominate in thescience fiction translation. Then, on the basis of initial norm, the thesis makes adiscussion on the translators' decision whether to adopt an “adequate” translation or toemploy an “acceptable” translation. For the purpose of minimizing the foreignness oftarget texts, translators tended to choose a way of free translation and adaptation.
Therefore, science fiction translation in the Late Qing Dynasty was characterized by thetendency of acceptability over adequacy. Finally, it studies and reconstructs theoperational norms in the concrete process of science fiction translation with specificexamples from the following two aspects: the manipulation of the contents, and themanipulation of the form. In terms of the contents, translators made deletions, additionsand alterations to the original at will, and it was also common for the translators to makecomments wherever they felt necessary, some were even rewriting in the process offiction translation. As for the form, firstly, some science fiction translators in the LateQing Dynasty usually changed the narrative mode of the original into a traditional thirdperson narrator or an omniscient point of view according to the reading habit of theChinese readers and adopt the Chinese Zhanghui Style. Secondly, classical Chinese wasstill dominantly adopted by most science fiction translators. However, with the birth ofthe vernacular Chinese, the language adopted by the some science fiction translatorswere a combination of the classical and vernacular Chinese which retained somefeatures of classical Chinese but much simpler and freer in vocabulary and sentencestructure.
ABSTRACT
This thesis focuses on the foreign children's literature translation （FCLT） in theLate Qing Dynasty（1898-1911）。 Under the guidance of polysystem theory, this thesisattempts to work out the complicated network of relations underlying the phenomenon.
In this way, the emphasis of this study is put on the relationship between FCLT andsystems including social background, the canonized literature and children's literaturein the Late Qing Dynasty. On the basis of this, the study comes to a conclusion aboutthe position assumed and the function served by FCLT in the Late Qing Dynasty.
Besides “Introduction” and “Conclusion”, this thesis consists of three chapters.
“Introduction” mainly deals with the research background, the methods employed aswell as the significance of this study; The first chapter is the literature review on thestudies of the children's literature and FCLT in the Late Qing Dynasty; The secondchapter takes polysystem theory as the theoretical foundation of this study; The thirdchapter is the main body of this thesis in which a detailed analysis of FCLT on thebasis of polysystem theory is presented in terms of the relationship between FCLT andthe above-mentioned three systems in the Late Qing Dynasty. At last, a conclusion ismade about the status of FCLT in the Late Qing Dynasty. In addition, limitations ofthis study are pointed out and suggestions for further study given.
As for the relationship between social background and FCLT in the Late QingDynasty, a macro study of the latter shows that FCLT made its first appearance in theLate Qing Dynasty to meet the need of the society. In addition, under the influence ofthe complicated situation of the society, it displays diversity in terms of motivations,translators as well as target readers. However, despite the fact that quite a number ofworks were translated to fulfill the translator's attempt to arouse a sense of patriotismamong readers or to spread Christianity, there existed works translated particularly forchildren. This is unprecedented in the Chinese history. Furthermore, those translationswith an initial goal of spreading Christianity turned out to be a good source ofchildren's books in both content and language during those days. Meanwhile, someother translations, such as science fiction, although not regarding children as the targetreaders, were widely favored by children. With regard to the relationship between thecanonized literature and FCLT in the Late Qing Dynasty, a micro study of thesetranslations reveals that the canonized literature has exerted a great influence on thetranslation in terms of the selection of works and the translating strategies. In addition,new elements were also introduced into the target culture via these translations. As aresult, going against the theory about the position of translated literature in the targetculture raised by Even-Zohar, FCLT in the Late Qing Dynasty not only employed theold patterns in the canonized literature but also introduced new types from the sourceculture. Concerning the relationship between FCLT and children's literature in theLate Qing Dynasty, these translations not only constituted a large share of children'sliterature but also promoted the production of works for children by domestic writers.
Based on the above study of the relationship between FCLT in the Late QingDynasty and the three systems, the thesis comes to the conclusion that at asynchronical level the translation resulted from the need of the society and fullyexposed the complicated situation of the social background. In addition, it not onlyfollowed the old patterns in the canonized literature but also brought in new elementsfrom the source culture. At a diachronic level, FCLT in the Late Qing Dynasty,together with works composed for children by domestic writers then, symbolizes thetransition of attitude towards children and the advent of Chinese children's literature.
