A Comparative Study of Two Chinese Versions of Gone with the Wind from a Social-Cultural Perspective

INTRODUCTIONTranslation Studies has developed by leaps and bounds and taken the cultural turn since the late 1970s in the West. It has been realized that translation doesn't take place in a vacuum by more and more scholars who have begun to analyze translation from cultural perspectives. Now, more attention is paid to the breeding context in the target culture and translation studies are becoming targetculture studies.In the 1990s, it claimed that Translation Studies had officially taken a Cultural Turn, which the original sourceoriented prescriptive approach to translation is now giving way to the target-oriented descriptive approach.In the paper, there is a case study in order to reveal the importance of social-cultural context in the process of shaping a translation work. It is about two Chinese versions of Gone with the Wind in different periods of time. One was translated by Fu Dong hua in 1940; the other was co-translated by Dai Kan, Li Ye guang and Zhuang Yi chuan in 1990.Attempting to evaluate translation from a macroperspective, this paper analyzes the social and cultural context of to Chinese versions of Gone with the Wind and finally gets the conclusion: translation works should be evaluated from a macro perspective rather than from linguistic or literary perspectives.1. LITERATURE REVIEWTraditional translation theories judge translation works or translators either from literary or linguistic perspectives. Next the paper will review traditional literary approaches and linguistic approaches.1.1 Traditional Translation CriteriaNo matter in the western countries or in China, the discussion about translation criteria has never stopped after the beginning of translation thousands of years ago. Such as, literal (i.e. word-for-word) and free (i.e. sense-for-sense) translation; Alexander Tytler's three principles; YanFu's three criteria; Eugene Nida's dynamic equivalence and Peter Newmark's semantic and communicative translation.In most aforementioned critics' opinions, traditional translation theories are mainly source-text oriented, prescriptive, and static and some of them are even unsystematic without having enough and rational analysis. The theories presuppose that there is an and perfect translation which is identical with the source text and translators' task is to seek for it. Yet the ideal translation is just like a pane of glass through which people can see the original without being aware of anything intervening. Therefore, translators' job is a hard one; translators are much like dancers on ropes with fettered legs.1.1.1 Literary ApproachesLiterary school view translation as an artistic creation by putting forward some standards, such as YanFu's three criteria: faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance, Qian-Zhongshu's transfiguration, Xu Yuanchong's beauty of sound, beauty of meaning and beauty of forma and so on.Literary approaches' criteria which are sharp and convincing are not only abstract and over-generalized but also impressionistic and subjective. Even though the literary school also values the translator's role in the process of translation, they are not so manageable in practical translation.1.1.2 Linguistic ApproachesLinguistic approaches regard translation as the transfer of texts from one language into another and employ scientific approaches to set up the practical rules and modes for translating, while the scholars and critics of literary school view translation as an artistic creation by putting forward some standards. The scholars of this school think that the central problem of translation is that of finding Target Language translation equivalents and the central task of translation theory is that of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence.The advantage of linguistic approaches lies in the detailed and exquisite description of the inter-lingual transference which is normative and aims at setting up norms and modes to restrict translating activity the defects are also obvious. …

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