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3.1.1 Idioms from Classical Literature 11
3.1.2 Idioms from Allusions 13
3.1.3 Idioms from Religions and Beliefs 14
3.1.4 Idioms from Art 16
3.2 Idioms Containing Environmental Voids 17
3.2.1 Idioms about Sky or Earth 17
3.2.2 Idioms about Weather 18
3.2.3 Idioms about Plants 19
3.3 Idioms Containing Lexical Voids 20
3.3.1 Idioms about Human Body 20
3.3.2 Idioms about Animals 21
3.3.3 Idioms about Numbers 22
3.3.4 Idioms about Colors 23
3.4 Idioms Containing Other Voids 24
Chapter Four Results and Discussion 26
4.1 Strategies Employed in Idiom Translation of Midnight 26
4.2 Factors Influencing the Translator’s Choices 28
Chapter Five Conclusion 31
References 32
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Researches on Midnight ’s Translation
Midnight, written in the 1930s by Mao Tun (1896--1981), is a masterpiece in China’s literature, which poetically reproduced the historical events from the Revolution of 1911 to the War of Liberation. It was highly recommended by Xu Qiubai as “the first successful realistic novel in China’s modern literature”.
After its publication in 1933, Midnight became a hot spot and during a period of half a century it was translated into Russian, German, Czech, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and English. The most well-known English version was translated in 1959, by Xu Mengxiong, who was highly praised by Zhang Peiji as “one of the few Chinese scholars who really master English”.
Midnight has aroused more attention from scholars. With ever-increasing studies and researches, the breadth of the development and the depth of digging have both reached unprecedented levels. These researches can be roughly pided into four aspects:1) comparative study 2) study on its artistic features 3) study on its language characteristics 4) study on new research areas.
The increasing researches on Midnight, however, haven’t stimulated the flourishing of its translation studies. Only three articles are found focused on the translation of Midnight, about the differences between Chinese and English thought pattern, cross-cultural misunderstanding and transmission of the novel’s language style. There hasn’t been, so far, any study concerning the translation of its idioms. Thus, it is assumed that the analysis of the idiom translation in Midnight could be rather meaningful.
1.2 Significance of the Study
Firstly, four-character-idioms, which have been passed down through generations, play an indispensable role in Chinese. Those fixed expressions, mostly from classical literature, make Chinese more vivid and animate. According to some statistics, over 20,000 Chinese four-character-idioms are used in daily life. That number is quite surprising, for there are about 80,000 characters in Chinese. The study of idiom translation is an inevitable part in spreading Chinese culture.
Secondly, idiom translation is one of the toughest problems in the translation of Chinese. Idioms are heavily cultural-loaded, which may impede the cross-cultural understanding for target readers to a large extent. “In fact, differences between cultures cause many more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure.” (Nida, 1964, p.162) For the target readers lack the cultural background as the source readers have, the cultural defaults could result in their confusion and misunderstandings.
Thirdly, Midnight is a masterpiece of Mao Tun and a milestone in Chinese modern novel history. The researches on its translation, yet, are inproportionate to those on its original version, let alone studies on its idiom translation. The paper is intended to cast new light on this field by analyzing how Xu Mengxiong dealt with the semantic voids in Chinese four-character-idioms from the perspective of the Skopos Theory.