Analysis of Lin Yutang’s Translation Thoughts and Translation Examples

Abstract

Lin Yutang, a famous translator and linguist in China, produced a large number of translations throughout his life and made great contributions to the cause of cultural exchange between China and the West. With his excellent bilingual skills and unique insights into Chinese and Western cultures, he translated a large amount of excellent literary works into the West, greatly promoting the effective dissemination of traditional Chinese culture. He creatively combined linguistics and psychology, making a new breakthrough on the basis of his predecessors’ translation theories. He proposed that translation is an art and the three criteria of translation are “faithfulness, fluency and beauty”, and he advocated that translation should be “sentence for sentence translation” rather than “word for word translation”. Among his many wonderful English translations, the translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life is natural and authentic, and fully reflects his artistic interest and outstanding translation skills. The thesis first studies Lin Yutang's translation thoughts, and on the basis of a full understanding of his translation thoughts, it analyzes the translation of the classical phrases in the translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life, and explores the concrete presentation of his three criteria of translation in the English version.