ABSTRACT

Prose carries the essence of Chinese traditional culture, and prose translation is one of the ways to spread Chinese culture. This paper aims to have an exploration on two translation strategies applied in Zhang Peiji’s translation, literal translation and free translation, by analyzing Zhang Peiji’s translation of Hu Shi’s essays so as to provide some translation tips for future prose translation.

Based on the briefness of words and shortness of sentence structures in Hu Shi’s essays, this research indicates that Zhang Peiji’s translation has reproduced the original simple style; at the same time, in order to make the expressions of target text be in accordance with the target language, Zhang Peiji usually adopts the strategy of free translation to transform Chinese into English with readability by adjusting the sentence order properly. Furthermore, Zhang Peiji adds indispensable conjunctions for coherence and cohesion in the target language. Besides, when literal translation can’t express the cultural information existed in the original text, Zhang Peiji also adopts free translation to translate the words with cultural background or sentences with complicated structure and finally achieves coherence in target text. 

Key Words: Zhang Peiji  Translation Strategies  Literal Translation    Free Translation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

中文摘要

Chapter One Introduction-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Significance and Purpose-1

1.3 General Structure of the Paper-2

Chapter Two Literature Review-4

2.1 Previous Studies of Prose Translation-4

2.1.1 Foreign Researches on Prose Translation-4

2.1.2 Domestic Studies on Zhang Peiji’s Prose Translation-4

2.2 Summary of Previous Studies-6

Chapter Three Theoretical Framework and Syntactic Features of the Prose-7

3.1 Main Concept of Free Translation and Literal Translation-7

3.2 Language Features of Hu Shi’s Essays-9

Chapter Four    Lexical and Syntactic Analysis of Zhang Peiji’s Translation-11

4.1 Comparison on Lexical Choices-11

4.3 Summary of Lexical and Syntactic Comparisons-24

Chapter Five Conclusions-25

5.1 Major Findings-25

5.2 Limitations of the Study-26

5.3 Suggestions for future researches-26

BIBLIOGRAPHY-27

Appendix-28

Appendix I-28

Appendix II-34