2.2 A Study on Chinese Common SayingsChinese common sayings are the words descended orally generation by generation.They are biref, meaningful and vivid. The common sayings are the “summaries of wisdomand experiences”(Liu Yinkai,1987:2) in ancient people’s life and production. They form theirdistinctive views by summarizing the insights held by generations(抓千古之虑,成一家之言).They are popular and widely spread.2.3 A General Review of the Researches on the English-Versions of Shui HuZhuanIn the early 1980s, few translation textbooks were published. But Qian Gechuan'sTranslation Skills and Basic Knowledge of Translation have a great influence. In BasicKnowledge of Translation, he took Pearl's translation of“ 放 屁 ”as an example ofmistranslation. His comment set a keynote for Pearl's translation owing to his celebrity effect.In the next 20 years, her translation is evaluated as "cultural pitfall', "misreading", “deadtranslation'', "overtranslation'' etc. These articles held negative attitude towards Pearl'stranslation because they just took some translations as examples. They failed to take thetranslation as a subject to carry on their study. So it is difficult for the study to go deep. Butmany articles about the study of its English version appeared since 2003 .That means thestudy has got rid of the boundary of the old idea gradually.By now, There are few articles concerning the translation of the common sayings . Bysearching on the Internet, the papers which are focused on the common sayings are found asfollowing: Hu Meng(2007) published On Sharpiro's Translating Approaches to theFour-Chinese-Character Structures in Outlaws of the Marsh, in that thesis he discussed howShapiro translated the structure of four-Chinese-character. Gao Ruixia's(2009) On Translationof the Pragmatic Function of the Common Sayings with Numbers in Shapiro 's Version of ShuiHu Chuan just discussed the common sayings containing numbers. Li Jie(2010) discussed thetranslation of idioms in Shapiro's version in Research on Idioms in Shapiro's Version of ShuiHu Chuan. And Wang Chang (2008) studied the translation of idioms in his thesis A Study on Compensation for Translation of Chinese Idioms in Jackson's Version of Shui Hu Zhuan.From the above discussion, we can find that the discussion over the translation of theChinese common sayings has been arised. However, the width and depth of the research isstill lacked. On the one hand , most of the discussions just pay attention to one version. On theother hand, the study is not systematic.
The data is just related to a small amount of thecommon sayings. So the readers cant get a convictive and ampersonal conclusion from thesepapers..3. An Analysis of Translation Strategies and Methods of Chinese CommonSayings Used by ShapiroLanguage is a special cultural phenomenon. A variety of cultural phenomena in anation's life is contained and reflected in it . Most information of the culture is stored in thewords of its language, especially in its common sayings. The material culture and spiritualculture are recorded in the common sayings and passed down generation by generation.Therefore, they are called the living fossil of human culture. Shui Hu Zhuan is about thelegendary story of common people in the Song Dynasty. The common sayings in their dailyconversations concerns different aspects in their life. How to translate these common sayingsproperly plays a very important role in making the target language readers have a betterunderstanding of Chinese culture. How do Shapiro deal with the common sayings? In thefollowing part, the paper will make an analysis on the translation strategies of the commonsayings by piding them into four different groups,they are the common sayings whichconcerns daily life, social life, spiritual life and the universe. 归化与异化视角下《水浒传》沙博理译本中汉语俗语的翻译研究(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_68791.html