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Therefore, my research takes Newmark’s semantic and communicative translation as the theoretical basis.
1.2.2 The Two Translators and Their Versions
Shi Xianrong, a literary translator and an expert in American literature, was born on April 11th, 1927 and died on May 18th, 1993. He was born in a poor merchant family. However, he had a good command of English. He was once an English major student in Peking University. Apart from English courses, he also took some Chinese courses taught by Li Guangtian, a dean in the Chinese apartment and a famous writer at that time. Influenced by him, Shi Xianrong’s Chinese had rapidly improved. What’s more, he showed great interest in foreign literature, especially in American literature. He studied American literature for a long time, till he was dead. He mainly translated fourteen American novels, including The Happiest People, The Catcher in the rye, The Circus in the Town, Waiting for Godot and so on. He was also an editor for 28 years. He edited and published Completed Works of Shakespeare, which got wide popularity in China and other foreign countries.
Sun Zhongxu, an amateur translator, was born in 1973 and died on August 28th, 2014. He graduated from Zhengzhou University. Amateur translator as he was, he translated as many as 21 novels. The Catcher in the Rye was one of them. And it was this book that had a great impact on him, even on the length of his life. In his mind, he formally began the career of translation since he started to translate The Catcher in the Rye. It was the first work he translated since he took up translation, but it was his tenth translation book according to the publish time. Therefore, it cost him a lot of efforts and time to translate and modify his version of The Catcher in the Rye.
As is mentioned above, there have been mainly 10 Chinese versions of The Catcher in the Rye so far. However, only two of them has got most attention. One is Shi Xianrong’s version. He was the first one to translate this novel into Chinese. The other is Sun Zhongxu’s version. Due to the passion for the novel, he decided to translate it into Chinese by himself. He read Shi Xianrong’s version beforehand, and took his version for reference during his own translation. Therefore, there must have existed some similarities between the two. However, differences can not be avoided. Shi Xianrong was a professional translator and an expert in American literature, while Sun Zhongxu was mainly an amateur one, so they differed in professionalism; Shi Xianrong was born much earlier than Sun Zhongxu. The former has encountered the Great Cultural Revolution, while the latter was mainly influenced by the reform and opening-up policy. Translation tends to be subjective. It is related to the translator’s life experience, ideology and personal understanding about the book, on which the social surroundings may have an effect. The Great Cultural Revolution and the reform and opening-up policy were two significant events in China. One was to imprison the mind, while the other was to free the mind. More importantly, Shi Xianrong’s version was published in 1963, while Sun Zhongxu’s version was published in 2008. Sun Zhongxu’s version was 45 years later than Shi Xianrong’s version. Thus, differences are easy results.
In a word, living in different social environments and having different degrees of professionalism, Shi Xianrong’s version and Sun Zhongxu’s version each have its own features. It is worth finding out these features and making comparisons between these two versions.
1.3 Semantic and Communicative Translation
1.3.1 Definition of Semantic and Communicative Translation
Newmark, one of the main figures in the founding of Translation Studies in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century, has divided his translation strategy into two aspects, semantic translation and communicative translation. Semantic translation is the process of using semantic information to aid in the translation of data in one representation or data model to another representation or data modal. “It attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structure of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original.”(Newmark, 2001) Communicative translation refers to the translation that happens in a communicative process, mainly based on certain background. “It attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original.”(Newmark, 2001)