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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Wei-ch’eng and Its English Version
Wei-ch’eng is considered as a masterpiece of Chinese literature in the twentieth century. It describes the society and people’s life in China at that time. In this work, Qian Zhongshu shows his interpretation towards marriage and life. Therefore it is full of Chinese characteristics. Those characteristics make Wei-ch’eng more readable but may cause difficulties in translation at the same time. The English version Fortress Besieged, translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K Mao has gained much popularity among English readers since it was published. It paves the way of communication between China and the west. However, some criticism can also be seen towards the English version. Li Yue thought that in Fortress Besieged the translators had confused the commendatory and derogatory sense of idioms like “亡羊补牢”, the source text contained a father’s encouragement to his son while the translation implied his complaints. All human speech consists of arbitrarily selected but intensely conventionalized signals, meaning can never be wholly separated from expression form (Steiner, 2001, p.252). Though no perfect translation exists, there are still some aspects worthy of learning.
2.2 Theories Concerned with This Study
In this paper, some translation theories will be used in the analysis of idiom translation in Fortress Besieged (2003). As is known to all, translating a literature work contains not only its literal meaning, but also its deep cultural meaning. Obviously, idioms play an important role in expressing cultural meaning. So whether they are well dealt with concerns the whole English version. According to Wang Dechun, Yang Suying and Huang Yueyuan, idiom is a kind of fixed terms or short sentences which is accustomed to use. It has fixed structure and tight meaning combination; usually it represents a concept which can’t be separated. So it’s necessary for us to make research on idiom translation by conveying it’s meaning and literal connotation at the same time.
The strategies of foreignization and domestication used in this study were put forward by Lawrence Venuti in 1995. In his book, foreignization is ‘likely to encounter opposition from publishers and large segments of Anglophone readers who read for immediate intelligibility’ (Venuti, 2008, p.273) and domestication is regarded as ‘bringing the author back home’ (p.20). Under the guidance of these two strategies, many methods are included. Apart from translation strategies, many scholars have put forward their different opinions towards translation in a specific area in recent years. They have perted their attention from macroscopic view to a more microcosmic aspect. For example, Liu Miqing puts forward the theory of translation aesthetics. Therefore in dealing with differences of bilingual manifestation, the principle of moderate adaptation should be taken into consideration. Any language can not be transferred into another directly for the differences of language structure and cultural psychological characteristics. With respect to idiom translation, Nida has once mentioned in his book that idioms are some of the most obvious condition for semantic adjustment, for the very fact that they are idioms means it is unlikely that the same type of distinctive form will have the same meaning in other language (Nida, 2004, p.106). This conforms to his previous theory, dynamic equivalence. In the book wrote by Nida and Taber, they give a definition to dynamic equivalence which is:
Dynamic equivalence is therefore to be defined in terms of the degree to which the receptors of the message in the receptor language respond to it in substantially the same manner as the receptors in the same manner as the receptors in the source language. This response can never be identical, for the cultural and historical settings are too different, but there should be a high degree of equivalence of response, or the translation will have failed to accomplish its purpose (Nida & Taber, 1969, p.24).