Abstract

Profanity, a unique kind of communication form, is widely used in The Catcher in the Rye and serves as the function of reflecting Holden Caulfield’s personality and expressing his feelings. And my thesis aims at the contrastive analysis of the profanity in Shi Xianrong’s and Sun Zhongxu’s versions of The Catcher in the Rye from the perspective of Newmark’s semantic and communicative translation and focuses on the differences in the two versions. The conclusion is reached that in terms of profanity translation, to some extent, Shi Xianrong emphasized semantic translation and semantic as well as syntactic structure, while Sun Zhongxu adopted the strong points of Shi Xianrong’s version and formed his own understanding by means of communicative translation. However，it is hard to reach a conclusion that which version is better, since each one has its features.

Key words: profanity; two Chinese versions; contrastive study; semantic and communicative translation

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction1

1.1 Background of the Research.1

1.2 Literature Review.1

1.2.1 Current Situation of the Translation of The Catcher in the Rye.1

1.2.2 The Two Translators and Their Versions.5

1.3 Semantic and Communicative Translation.6

1.3.1 Definition of Semantic and Communicative Translation.6

1.3.2 Comparison Between Semantic and Communicative Translation.6

2. Profanity.8

2.1 Definition of Profanity8

2.2 Function of Profanity8

2.3 English Profanity and Chinese Profanity9

3. Study on the Profanity From the Word Level.10

3.1 Classical Profanity in the Two Versions.10

3.2 Analysis on Classical English Profanity.11

3.2.1 “Goddam”11

3.2.2 “Damn”12

3.2.3 “Hell”13

3.2.4 Analysis on Nominal Profanity14

3.2.5 Analysis on Adjective Profanity15

4. Study on the Profanity From the Phrase Level.17

4.1 “God damn you”.17

4.2 “Just for the hell of it”. 17

4.3 “Fuck you”.19

5. Study on the Profanity From the Sentence Level.20

5.1 Analysis on Profanity in Exclamatory Sentences.20

5.2 Analysis on Profanity in Declarative Sentences.20

6. Conclusion.23

6.1 Major Findings.23

6.2 Limitations.23

6.3 Suggestions for Further research24

Bibliography.25