英文摘要 |
As one of the most translated children's books in the world, The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio), written by Carlo Collodi (1826-1890) in 1883, was first translated into Chinese by Xu Tiaofu (1901-1981) based on two English translations. Using dual or multiple mediating texts as the source texts for translation is not rare in Chinese translation history, and this phenomenon, compared with the one involving translation from one single source text, is more complicated. The translator needs to evaluate more than one text and select the content that he/she would like to translate. In this study, through close reading and critical discourse analysis, I investigate how Xu made decisions when he was faced with differences between the two mediating texts. This paper explores how he made his decisions, such as choosing to translate the less violent description between the two mediating texts or combining both texts to make the ultimate target text more complete, and analyzes the possible reasons and effects. Finally, it examines the relationship between the translator's views on translation and children's needs and the historical context at the time. Overall, Xu used two mediating texts to produce a relatively complete and faithful translation when he was doing compilative indirect translation. Facing differences between the two source texts, he adopted varied strategies according to different considerations, but he gave priority to complete messages and logical narration, rather than less violent descriptions for young readers or concise content due to length constraint for publication purpose. |