Studies of Zhu Shenghao’s Translation f Shakespeare from Man
Introduction
1. Significance of the Research
Shakespeare’s Complete Works, which made Shakespeare an outstandingplaywright, earned him a worldwide reputation. Undoubtedly, China gave rise to apopular trend of translating Shakespeare’s Complete Works. The translating activity ofShakespeare’s works could be traced back to Lin Shu and other scholars of the late QingDynasty. As time went by, more and more celebrities threw themselves to the translationactivity, and Zhu Shenghao was among the best. His translation versions have beenappreciated by millions of readers. His contributions to the spread of Shakespeare’sComplete Works in China can not be ignored.Zhu Shenghao translated Shakespeare’s masterpieces by employing the writingstyle of poeticized prose, which made his version as elegant as the original one.Furthermore, he stuck to faithfulness and smoothness. He digested the original workbefore starting translating, and played the role of readers after translating. Hismeticulosity was worthy of our admiring and learning. However, it is a regret that only afew people have understood him, and that not so many people have systematicallystudied the great legacy he left us.According to Lefevere, translation is a form of rewriting of the original work, andrewriting is manipulation (Lefevere, 2004) . Therefore, the present author attempts toillustrate Zhu Shenghao’s translation of The Merchant of Venice as the case study byadopting the manipulation theory. The manipulation theory proposed by Andre Lefeverein the 1990s includes ideology, poetics and patronage. By analyzing these factors, itwould not be hard for us to understand the renowned translator. In addition, the reasonsfor our choosing The Merchant of Venice are listed as follows: Firstly, it wasShakespeare’s most representative work and Zhu Shenghao’s version has long been well-received. Secondly, his version seems to be rife with ample manipulated factors.This thesis, based on the manipulation theory, aims to analyze Zhu Shenghao’stranslation activity systematically so as to make it a new attempt of Zhu Shenghao’stranslation studies, thus contributing to the translation studies in China.2. Research MethodologyThis thesis takes the manipulation theory as the framework to analyze and exploreZhu Shneghao’s translation. The research on the manipulated factors does not only aimto find out the differences between the original text and the target text, but the amplemanipulated forces behind the translated versions.Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice translated by Zhu Shenghao is taken as amajor example in the thesis. And such materials as some essays written by ZhuShenghao, his biography written by others, and some information about him are usedfor reference so as to finish this thesis.The examples in this thesis are quoted from the Oxford edition of The Merchant ofVenice, which was translated by Zhu Shenghao into Chinese. And this thesis adopted boththe quantitative analysis and the qualitative analysis to analyze, by comparison, both thesource and target texts of The Merchant of Venice at lexical, syntactical, rhyme and rhythmand cultural levels so as to find out their differences and similarities between the Englishtext and its Chinese version.3. Organization of the ThesisBesides Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis consists of four chapters.In “Introduction”, the significance of the research and the research methodologyare presented. Chapter One is about Zhu Shenghao’s life and his translation ideas. Itincludes the overview of his life and the statement of his translation ideas. The latterpart is crucial to the thesis. And the present author summarizes his translation ideas inthree aspects: translation attitude, translation method and translation process.Chapter Two is the literature review consisting of two parts. One is the studies onZhu Shenghao’s translation, and the other is the studies on Zhu Shenghao’s Translationof The Merchant of Venice.Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of the thesis. This chapter tries toexplain the occurrence of cultural turn, expounding the three factors of manipulationtheory in detail so as to use them in analyzing Zhu Shenghao’s Translation of TheMerchant of Venice in Chapter Four.Chapter Four is the body of the thesis. It explains the manipulated factors asrevealed in Zhu Shenghao’s translation activity by quoting examples from his version ofThe Merchant of Venice. In this chapter, the present author attempts to describe theideological element, the patronage and poetics as revealed in his translation, and comesto conclude that the manipulated forces really exist in his translation activity.In “Conclusion”, the present author summarizes the whole study, pointing out thetopics for further study and the limitations of the thesis.#p#分页标题#e#
Chapter One Zhu Shenghao and His Translation Ideas
1.1 Zhu Shenghao’s Life: An Overview
Zhu Shenghao was born in a declining merchant family in Jiaxing, Zhejiangprovince on February 2, 1912. Pitifully, he became an orphan at 12 years old, and wasraised by his grandaunt who was over 80 years old at that time. On the second day of hisbirth, a fortune-teller said Zhu Shenghao would be very successful if he could study.The main atmosphere of Jiaxing was mainly for business at that time, but ZhuShenghao’s elders believed in the fortune-teller, and tried their best to afford him tostudy under the tight money condition, hoping he could reenergize his family withknowledge.When Zhu Shenghao was 5 years old, he studied in Kaimin elementary school. In1924, Zhu Shenghao studied in Xiuzhou secondary school which was held by Americanchurch, so he has the opportunity to learn English. In 1929, Zhu Shenghao wasrecommended for admission into Zhijiang Universitywhich were filled with patriotism. As for Zhu Shenghao’s solid Chinese literaryfoundation, Xia Chengtao described that when he read seven essays written by the poetsin the Tang Dynasty, he found that Zhu Shenghao had his refreshing notions. Therefore,he deemed that Zhu Shenghao could not be regarded as a student among his for Zhu’samazing intelligence(Wu Jiemin & Zhu Hongda, 1990).After graduation, he worked as an English editor of Zhijiang University JournalBefore long, he went to World Press and assumed the position of Englishcompiler there, and took part in compiling English-Chinese Four Uses Dictionary(). In 1935, the bookshops all over the country expected to publish thetranslated versions of foreign literature, and World Press was determined to publish TheComplete Works of William Shakespeare at that moment. Zhan http://www.ukthesis.org/dissertation_writing/linguistic/ Wenxu encouraged ZhuShenghao to take the difficult translation task. From then on, Zhu Shenghao made up hismind to translate The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. He accomplished hisfirst version of The Tempest in 1936.When Zhu Shenghao was translating The CompleteWorks of William Shakespeare, his family was on a tight budget, but he devoted himselfso much to the translating work that his physical condition went from bad to worse.Finally, he confined to his bed. However, he didn’t accept timely medical treatmentbecause of poverty, so he said to his wife, “if I had known I would be ill and neverrecover, I should have devoted all my energy to translating them, and finished thetranslation work.”(Wu Jiemin & Zhu Hongda, 1990) He died in the end of December,1944, with the translation of the historical plays in the rough.Zhu Shenghao spent almost ten years in translating Shakespeare’s works, in thecondition of chaotic time, life distress and lack of reference books, but he spared everyeffort to finish translating about thirty and a half works of The Complete Works ofWilliam Shakespeare, leaving the glorious legacy in the literary translation cause ofChina. Regretfully, Zhu Shenghao didn’t have time to finish all the thirty-seven plays.What is worse, he didn’t see with his own eyes his versions published when he wasalive. The World Press commenced to publish all the Zhu Shenghao’s translated worksin 1947. Undoubtedly, he is one of the most outstanding Shakespeare translators in the with impressivegrades. Minored in English literature, he chose Chinese literature as his major. ZhijiangUniversity lied in Hangzhou, facing the torrential Qianjiang River and lofty Pagoda ofSix Harmonies. The beautiful scenery of the campus cultivated his temperament as wellas developed his wisdom and will. Under the meticulous guidance of Xia Chengtao whowas specialized in poetry, Zhu Shenghao read extensively, so he possessed solidfoundation of traditional literature, and was honored as “the gifted youth of ZhijiangUniversity”. Since Zhu Shenghao was a junior school student, he had been crazy aboutSino-Foreign literary classics, especially poetry. He was absorbed in Tao Yuanmin’ssimplicity and elegance, Li Bai’s unrestrainedness and nature as well. He admired thepassion of P. B. Shelley and the unconstrained of G. G. Byron. He wrote many poems#p#分页标题#e#
Chapter 2 Literature Review 18-26
2.1 Studies on Zhu Shenghao’s Translation 18-22
2.2 Studies on Zhu Shenghao’s Translation …-23
2.3 Summary 23-26
Chapter 3 Theoretical Foundation 26-32
3.1 Theoretical Background: Cultural Turn 26-27
3.2 The Manipulation Theory 27-30
3.3 Summary 30-32
Chapter 4 Analysis of Zhu Shenghao’s …-56
4.1 The Merchant of Venice 32-34
4.2 Analysis of the Manipulative …55
4.3 Summary 55-56
ConclusionThis thesis focuses on Zhu Shenghao’s version of The Merchant of Venice, inwhich Lefevere’s manipulation theory has been applied to making the explanatory anddescriptive analysis. Many examples are quoted from Zhu Shenghao’s version of TheMerchant of Venice and analyzed in the perspective of three-factor theory.In this thesis, the present author firstly introduces the life of Zhu Shenghao,probing into his growing experiences. And a brief study of his translation ideas is made.Then the thesis explains the manipulation theory in details, which includes ideology,patronage and poetics. According to the manipulation theory, translation is inevitablyaffected by the ideology, patronage and poetics elements. This theory gives us a newcomprehension towards translation in terms of the cultural factors. This thesis, based onthe manipulation theory, attempts to analyze the manipulating forces as revealed in ZhuShenghao’s translation in terms of ideology, patronage and poetics. In the body of thethesis, the http://www.ukthesis.org/dissertation_writing/linguistic/ present author analyzes the ideological force from the social and personalaspects. The former is done from the political and cultural environment influencing ZhuShenghao’s translation at the macro level. Owing to the war and chaoes in China, ZhuShenghao finished his translation under tough conditions. He had to face all thehardships and insisted on translating with his strong willpower. The latter includes hispersonal quality, patriotism and translation strategy, providing Zhu Shenghao’stranslation with a precondition and motivation. All these personal ideologies affect hisadoption of translation strategy. Moreover, the patronage factor is accounted from threeaspects: the World Press, recommendation and inspiration from Zhan Wenxu, andsupport and help from Song Qingru. They are all the important patronages that supportZhu Shenghao’s translation, encouraging him to finish translating Shakespeare’s works.The World Press directly drives him to start translating Shakespeare’s works.. With theencouragement and recommendation from Zhan Wenxu, he gets the opportunity.
Besides, his wife Song Qingru’s contribution cannot be denied. She accompanies ZhuShenghao dumbly, sharing the same lot with him. She shoulders the household duties,never bothering Zhu Shenghao’s translation work. Furthermore, she helps her husbandwith proofreading what he has translated. In a word, she is a decisive patronage in ZhuShenghao’s translation. Without her, Zhu Shenghao would not achieve his great success.As for poetics, the manipulation at lexical level, the manipulation at syntax,manipulation at the level of rhyme and rhythm as well as manipulation at cultural levelare explored. In addition, many examples are quoted from Zhu Shenghao’s version ofThe Merchant of Venice and analyzed one by one in detail to demonstrate themanipulating phenomenon in terms of poetics. Through the detailed analysis, thepresent author draws a conclusion that the manipulation does exist in Zhu Shenghao’stranslation.However, due to the limitations of reference materials, time and ability, the presentauthor is unable to analyze all the manipulation phenomena in Zhu Shenghao’stranslation of The Merchant of Venice. Besides, this thesis still requires furtherimprovement and more endeavors still need to be done to get a more comprehensiveinvestigation into Zhu Shenghao’s translation activities.#p#分页标题#e#
