ＳＨ ＡＮ Ｇ Ｈ ＡＩ  ＮＴ Ｅ ＲＮ ＡＴＩ Ｏ ＮＡ Ｌ  Ｓ Ｔ Ｕ Ｄ

Ｉ Ｉ Ｅ Ｓ Ｕ Ｎ Ｖ ＥＲ Ｓ Ｔ Ｙ
Ｉ Ｉ 


（ 题目 

）

社 会文 化语境 下 的 美 国 黑 人 英语 汉译 研 究




以 《 哈克 贝 利 ？
费 恩 历 险 ｉ己 》 的 四 译本为例



学科 专 业英 语 语 言 文 学 



届 另  Ｉ

Ｊ 
２ ０ ２ １ 届




姓 名 
舒亦安 



导师 
吴琚如 


 上海外国语大学
硕士学位论文

社会文化语境下的美国黑人英语汉译研究
——以《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》的四译本为例

院系：英语学院

学科专业：英语语言文学

姓名：舒亦安

指导教师：吴珺如

2021 年 5 月
 Shanghai International Studies University

A STUDY OF AFERICAN-AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH

TRANSLATION IN SOCIO-CULTURAL CONTEXT

——BASED ON COMPARATIVE ANALYSES OF CHINESE

VERSIONS OF THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

A Thesis Submitted to School of English Studies

In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for

Degree of Master of Arts

By Shu Yian

Under the Supervision of Professor Wu Junru

May, 2021
 答辩委员会成员

主席：刘华文 上海交通大学

成员：王少娣 上海外国语大学

邵毅 上海外国语大学
 Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Associate
Professor Wu Junru who offered me valuable advice and detailed guidance on this
paper. The successful completion of this thesis owes to her support and instructions.
Next, I would like to thank Shanghai International Studies University for
providing a good study environment as well as rich academic resources for me,
without which I could hardly solve difficult problems.
Besides, I owe my thanks to my classmates and friends who made constructive
suggestions for my paper.
Last but not least, I’m grateful to my family members for their support and
encouragement.

I
 摘要
方言作为一种非标准语言变体，在文学作品中具有重要的社会功能和修辞功
能，方言翻译研究的重要性业已为中外许多学者所认可。其中，美国黑人英语作
为一种特殊的社会方言，涉及到黑人的身份认同，在黑人文学作品中具有重要地
位。恰当翻译文学作品中的美国黑人英语可以再现原文的修辞效果，给读者以独
特的审美体验，同时也对传达文学作品的中心思想以及蕴含于作品中的黑人文化
具有重要意义。然而，国内的方言研究多停留于中国方言的外译，黑人英语汉译
研究没有受到足够重视，已有的研究也多为倾向于语言层面的规约性研究，描述
性研究相对稀缺。
本文以《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》的四个具有代表性的译本为例，在描述性
翻译研究的框架下，借助图里的充分-可接受翻译连续体对不同译者所采用的翻
译策略和方法进行界定和研究，并借助勒菲弗尔的改写理论所提供的视角，从共
时和历时两个方面考察社会文化语境对美国黑人英语汉译的影响，其中主要研究
意识形态和诗学因素带来的影响。本文先对所选的四个译本按照出版时期分为两
组，随后分别对两组译本进行共时比较，主要分析同时期译者在翻译策略和翻译
方法上的共同点，并考察对应时期社会文化语境对译者在翻译策略和方法选择上
的影响，随后本文从历时视角对四个译本进行考察，观察不同时期译者在翻译策
略和方法的选择上所呈现的不同倾向，并考察其与不同时期社会文化语境的变迁
之间的联系。
经研究，本文发现社会文化语境对于黑人英语的汉译存在影响。20 世纪 50
年代，文学受到强大的政治影响，服务于政治，文学翻译更强调意识形态主旨的
传达而不是作品本身的艺术性，导致了 50 年代的译者更重视作品思想的传递而
不是语言及修辞特征的重现；同时，该时期语言工具论居于主导地位，语言被视
为工具，本身的艺术价值被忽视；另外，文学语言承担着传播普通话的作用，因
而受到了严格的规范，使得译者在翻译时几乎没有操纵语言的空间。中国文学进
入新时期后，“百花齐放，百家争鸣”的文艺创作方针弱化了政治对文艺创作的
限制，同时，改革开放后中国文坛与西方的文学交流引入了语言本体论，语言本
身的价值被重视起来，因此新时期的译者得以从强大的政治影响中解脱，并认识
到语言本身的价值，在翻译中更强调对语言特征和修辞效果的重现。然而，新时

II
期仍然存在标准化倾向，这主要是译者对在对读者期待有所了解的情况下作出的
让步。
通过引入新的共时比较角度，以及对相应时期的社会文化语境的更为细致的
考察，本文希望对国内已有的美国黑人英语汉译研究进行一些补充，为丰富国内
的方言翻译研究做出一点贡献。但是，本文只考察了《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》
中美国黑人英语的汉译，其他涉及黑人英语的文学作品并不在考察之列，今后仍
需扩大研究范围，纳入其他的黑人文学作品进行考察。

关键词：方言翻译；美国黑人英语；社会文化语境；哈克贝利·费恩历险记

III
 Abstract
Dialects, as non-standard language variants, perform important social and
rhetorical functions in literary works. The significance of the research on dialect
translation is recognized by many foreign and domestic scholars. African-American
Vernacular English is a special sociolect concerning the social identity of the black
people and plays an important role in Black literature. A proper translation of Black
English in literary works can reproduce the rhetorical effects of the original, bringing
readers a unique aesthetic experience, and it is of vital importance in delivering the
central idea of the literary work and communicating the Black culture embedded in it.
However, domestic research on dialect translation mainly focuses on the translation of
Chinese dialects with few studies conducted on the translation of African-American
Vernacular English. Most existing studies on the translation of Black English are
mainly prescriptive ones at the linguistic level, while descriptive studies are few.
This thesis takes four representative Chinese versions of The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn as examples, carrying out research on the translation of
African-American Vernacular English under the framework of descriptive translation
studies. The thesis applies Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable translation
to look into the translation strategies and methods of different translators. The
research is conducted in both synchronic and diachronic ways in order to examine the
influence posed on the translation of African-American Vernacular English discourses
by socio-cultural context, mainly focusing on studying the ideological and poetical
factors of different times under the guidance of Lefevere’s rewriting theory. This
paper first divides four selected versions into two groups according to their publishing
time. Then the thesis conducts synchronic research on both groups separately in order
to find the similarity of the translation strategies and methods of contemporary
translators and investigate the influence of socio-cultural context. Next, all selected
versions are examined from a diachronic perspective to study the connection between
the change of socio-cultural context of different times and different tendencies of the
translators in the choice of translation strategies and methods.

IV
 The thesis finds that socio-cultural context indeed has an impact on the
translation of African-American Vernacular English. In the 1950s, literature was
subjected to strong political influence and was meant to serve political needs,
resulting in the literary translation emphasizing the transfer of ideological content of
the work with the artistry of the work overlooked. Meanwhile, the language was
viewed as a tool and the value of the language itself was ignored. Additionally, the
literary speech was put under strict regulation because it was assigned with the crucial
task of promoting mandarin. The Chinese literature entered a new era in the 1980s
with the policy to create flourishing literature and art weakening the political
influence. Moreover, the language ontology was introduced to China due to the
cultural exchange after the reform and opening up, which leads to the language being
valued as an independent entity. As a result, translators in the new era extricated
themselves from the strong political influence and recognized the value of the
language itself, laying emphasis on the reproduction of unique features and rhetorical
effects of Black English, showed a tendency of foreignization. However, the tendency
of standardization still exists in the new era. This is the compromise of the translator
for the readers based on the translator’s understanding of the expectation of readers.
By introducing a new research perspective of synchronic comparison and
conducting a more detailed investigation of socio-cultural context of corresponding
time periods, this thesis aims at making some supplements to existing research on the
translation of African-American Vernacular English to make a contribution to the
enrichment of domestic dialect translation studies. However, the thesis only studies
the translation of Black English in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and other
literary works related to Black English are not included in the study, which means the
research of the thesis should be expanded and supplemented in the future.

Key Words: dialect translation; African-American Vernacular English; socio-cultural

context; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

V
 Content
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................I

摘要 ...........................................................................................................................................II

Abstract ....................................................................................................................................IV

Introduction ...............................................................................................................................1

Chapter One Theoretical Background .......................................................................................6

1.1 Related Concepts .............................................................................................................6

1.1.1 The Definition of African-American Vernacular English.........................................6

1.1.2 Linguistic Features of African-American Vernacular English in Literary Works ....6

1.2 Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................................8

Chapter Two Literature Review ..............................................................................................12

2.1 Domestic and Foreign Researches on the Translation of Dialects .................................12

2.2 Domestic and Foreign Researches on African-American Vernacular English ..............13

2.3 Domestic Researches on Translating African-American Vernacular English into

Chinese ................................................................................................................................15

2.4 Domestic and Foreign Researches on Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable
translation ............................................................................................................................17

2.5 Domestic and Foreign Researches on Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory .............................19

Chapter Three A Synchronic Study of Two Chinese Versions in the 1950s ...........................21

3.1 Introduction of Zhang Wanli’s Version and Zhang Yousong’s Version .......................21

3.2 A comparison of the Two Versions in Translating African-American Vernacular

English .................................................................................................................................23

3.3 Ideological and Poetical Influence in the 1950s ............................................................25

3.3.1 The Viewpoint of “Literature Serving Politics”......................................................25

3.3.2 Language as a Tool .................................................................................................29

3.3.3 The Standardization of Speech ...............................................................................31

3.4 Summary........................................................................................................................33

Chapter Four A Synchronic Study of Two Chinese Versions after the 1980s .........................34

4.1 Introduction of Cheng Shi’s Version and Xu Ruzhi’s Version ......................................34

4.2 A Comparison of the Two Versions in Translating African- American Vernacular

English .................................................................................................................................37
 4.3 The Influence of the Socio-cultural Context ..................................................................39

4.3.1 The Influence of a New Policy to Create Flourishing Literature and Art ...............39

4.3.2 The Influence of the Language Ontology ...............................................................41

4.3.3 The Influence of the Expectation of Readers ..........................................................44

4.4 Summary........................................................................................................................47

Chapter Five A Diachronic Study of Four Selected Versions .................................................49

5.1 Comparison and Analysis of Diachronous Translators’ Translation Strategies and

Methods ...............................................................................................................................49

5.1.1 An Ever-present Tendency of Standardization .......................................................49

5.1.2 A Tendency of Foreignization After 1980 ..............................................................50

5.2 Changes in the Socio-cultural Context ..........................................................................51

5.2.1 The Weakening of the Political Influence over the Literary System ......................51

5.2.2 A Shift in the View of Language ............................................................................55

5.2.3 The Translator’s Adaptation to the Expectations of Readers ..................................59

5.3 Summary........................................................................................................................61

Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................63

Reference .................................................................................................................................66
 Introduction
Mark Twain’s remarkable mastery of local dialects in his famous work, The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is highly regarded by many scholars and critics.
Among these dialects showed up in the book is African-American Vernacular English,
and this special sociolect generated a unique aesthetic effect in Black literature and
thus invited much research and discussion on its distinctive functions as well as its
translation. However, existing studies on the translation of Black English are mostly
prescriptive and descriptive studies are very limited, therefore this thesis tries to
address the influence of socio-cultural context on the translation of African-American
Vernacular English under the framework of descriptive translation studies.
In the following section, more detailed information will be given in terms of
research background, research significance, research method, and the layout of the
thesis.

Research Background
Dialect, as a non-standard language variety, performs important social and
aesthetic functions in literary works. The significance of the research on dialect
translation is recognized by many foreign and domestic scholars. Traditional
researches on dialect translation are mainly prescriptive. Nowadays, researches on
dialect translation are mostly conducted under the framework of descriptive
translation studies. Many scholars reach an agreement that new perspectives from
other fields need to be introduced into the research, and some scholars point out that
descriptive studies on more translated examples of dialects are required to enrich the
study.
African-American Vernacular English is a special sociolect and it played an
important role in Black literary works. Domestic researches on dialect translation
mainly focus on the translation of Chinese dialect. The study on translating African-
American vernacular English into Chinese is limited. Existing researches on
African-American Vernacular English translation are mainly comparative studies of
different Chinese versions of Black literary works, evaluating whether these
1
translations are faithful and whether adopted translation methods are effective. Few
researchers noticed the influence exerted by the socio-cultural context on the
translation of African-American Vernacular English.

Research Significance
Dialect plays an important role in literary works and the research on dialect
translation is of great significance. African-American Vernacular English, as a
sociolect, performs unique social and aesthetic functions in Black literary works. A
proper translation of African-American Vernacular English can reproduce the unique
rhetorical effect of the original work, bringing readers a distinctive aesthetic
experience, and it is of vital importance in delivering the central idea of the literary
work and communicating the Black culture embedded in it. More importantly, Black
English concerns the social identity of its users and is one of the main factors that
compose their identity consciousness. The research on translating African-American
Vernacular English into Chinese is therefore of significance. However, domestic
research on the translation of African-American Vernacular English is limited, as the
main focus of domestic study on dialect translation is translating Chinese dialect into
other languages. The literature on African-American Vernacular English translation
now available mostly lingers on the linguistic level, with few researchers noticing the
influence of the socio-cultural context on the translation of African-American
Vernacular English. The research on the effect of the socio-cultural context is still
limited.
This thesis took four Chinese versions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as
examples, studying translation strategies and methods of different translators under
the framework of descriptive translation studies. The research was conducted in both
synchronic and diachronic ways to examine the influence posed on the translation of
African-American Vernacular English by the socio-cultural context of different times.
By introducing a new comparative perspective of different translation versions and by
more detailed research on the effect of the socio-cultural context, this thesis aims at
making some supplement to the existing domestic research on the translation of

2
African-American Vernacular English and making a small contribution to amplify the
domestic research on dialect translation.

Research Method
In this thesis a descriptive study is carried out on four selected Chinese versions
of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, comparing and analyzing translation
strategies and methods adopted by different translators in translating African-
American vernacular English. Socio-cultural factors that affected the translators’
selections of translation strategies and methods are discussed as well. This thesis
employs Gideon Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable translation as a
reference in analyzing different translators’ tendency in selecting translation strategies
and Lefevere’s rewriting theory is adopted to provide a research perspective which
mainly focuses on the ideological and poetical factors in studying the socio-cultural
context of different time periods.
This thesis compares the four selected Chinese versions in both synchronic and
diachronic ways. A synchronic study is carried out on Zhang Wanli’s version and
Zhang Yousong’s version because they were both published in the 1950s. Cheng
Shi’s version and Xu Ruzhi’s version are compared synchronically because they were
both published after 1980. After conducting synchronic researches on contemporary
versions, a diachronic study on all selected versions is launched. The synchronic
research mainly aims to find the similarity in the translation strategies and methods of
contemporary translators and analyze the similarity in the influence of the
socio-cultural context on the translation. The diachronic research mainly targets at
comparing the differences between the tendencies in the selection of translation
strategies and methods in different times and studying the connection between the
changes in the translation tendencies and the changes in the socio-cultural context.
The research employs corpus as an auxiliary tool to conduct a quantitative study
on the frequency of the use of the malapropism method in Cheng’s version and Xu’s
version. The result is used as proof to point out the difference between the translation
strategies and methods adopted by Cheng Shi and by Xu Ruzhi. Other parts of the

3
research are qualitative by looking into different translation versions, prefaces of
different translators, the literature on socio-cultural contexts of different times and
other related materials.

The Layout of the Thesis

This thesis conducts descriptive research on four selected versions of The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, comparing and analyzing translation strategies and
methods adopted by different translators. Meanwhile, this paper looks into the
influence of the socio-cultural context on the translators’ choices on translation
strategies and methods as well. The whole thesis consists of six chapters.
The first chapter provides the theoretical background of the paper. It contains the
introduction of relevant concepts referred to in this paper, and the theoretical
framework of the thesis.
The second chapter is the literature review of this thesis. It contains the literature
review of the domestic and foreign researches on dialect translation, the literature
review of the domestic and foreign researches on African-American Vernacular
English, and the literature review of the domestic researches on translating
African-American Vernacular English into Chinese.
The third chapter is a synchronic comparison of two versions of The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn published in the 1950s, Zhang Wanli’s version and Zhang
Yousong’s version. Typical translated examples are extracted from two versions and
are analyzed to demonstrate the translation strategy and method adopted by both
translators. Their translation strategy and method prove to be similar and a study on
the socio-cultural context of the 1950s is conducted to explain the similarity.
The fourth chapter is a synchronic comparison of two versions published after
1980, Cheng Shi’s version and Xu Ruzhi’s version. Representative examples in both
versions are used as showcases of the translation strategies and methods adopted by
the two contemporary translators. Then the socio-cultural context of the time after
1980, which is also known as the new period of China, is investigated to explain the
similarity between two translators’ translation strategies and methods. The difference

4
in their frequency of applying malapropism is discussed as well, which serves as
another proof of the influence of the socio-cultural context on the translation of
African-American Vernacular English.
The fifth chapter is a diachronic comparison of all four selected versions. This
chapter compares translation strategies and methods adopted by four translators,
looking into their tendency in the selection of translation strategies and methods. The
change in the tendency is explained by the changes in the socio-cultural context
across time. Furthermore, this chapter discusses and explains the tendency of
standardization in the new period.
The last chapter is the conclusion. This chapter summarizes all the research
results in three previous chapters, indicating the influence of the socio-cultural context
on the translation of African-American Vernacular English.

5
Chapter One Theoretical Background
This chapter presents the theoretical background of the thesis. The first section is
the discussion of related concepts in the thesis, which helps clarify the concept of
African-American Vernacular English and introduces its linguistic features. Then it is
followed by the theoretical framework, introducing the theories used in the thesis and
explaining why and how they are employed.

1.1 Related Concepts

1.1.1 The Definition of African-American Vernacular English

Since the 1950s some American sociolinguists have started a systematic and
profound investigation of the origin and features of African-American Vernacular
English, and they proposed that it has its own set of linguistic rules and has become a
sociolect used across the United States (Yu Chongluo, 1994). African-American
Vernacular English can be seen as a social marker as its users are mostly considered
as people who have low social statuses and limited education and are usually subject
to discrimination (Feng Ruowen, 2013). The definition of African-American
Vernacular English varies with different research fields. For sociolinguists, who focus
more on the origin of African-American Vernacular English and its deviations from
the Standard English, it is referred to as the non-standard oral language used by the
Black American; in literary study, African-American Vernacular English has a
broader sense as it refers to the oral form of the language as well as the Standard
English used by Black writers in their literary works (Wang Yanhong, 2010). This
paper mainly focuses on the non-standard oral form of African-American Vernacular
English presented in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

1.1.2 Linguistic Features of African-American Vernacular English in

Literary Works
African-American Vernacular English deviates from Standard English in several
aspects, and it has a unique function as a social indicator to reveal the social status
and education of its user. It is therefore employed by writers to achieve an effect of
6
foregrounding and to perform distinctive social and stylistic functions. This section
discusses three main features of African-American Vernacular English in literary
works, namely, its phonetic, syntactic, and lexical features.
1.1.2.1 Phonetic Features
In the pronunciation of African-American Vernacular English, vowels are
relatively less common; final consonants are usually omitted; dental consonants are
mostly replaced by other consonants; long vowels are sometimes enunciated as short
ones; pronunciations of nasal consonants can be weakened (Yu Chongluo, 1998).
Examples are as follows:
I reck’n I could eat a hoss. I think I could. How long you ben on de islan’?
(Twain, 1981, p42)
Here, “reckon” is pronounced as “reck’n”, in which the vowel for “o” is omitted;
“been” is articulated as “ben”, as the pronunciation of the long vowel is shortened;
“the” is enunciated as “de”, where /θ/ is replaced by /d/; “island” is read as “islan’”,
and the final consonant /d/ is omitted.
“Yo’ voice soun’ lak you catchin’ a cole,” said Mammy suspiciously.
(Mitchell, 1996, p25)
Here, “Your” is pronounced as “Yo’” and “like” as “lak”, in which long vowels
are rendered as short ones; “cold” is enunciated as “cole”, where the last consonant
gets omitted; “catching” is pronounced as “catchin’”, as the pronunciation of the nasal
consonant is weakened.
African-American Vernacular English in literary works has another special
characteristic, which is termed as “eye dialect” by George Krapp (Wang Yanhong,
2010). Eye dialect refers to the phenomenon that writers utilize words that are
incorrect in spelling but can be correctly pronounced while reading in their works
(ibid). Through eye dialect, the readers are able to form the impression that characters
speaking African-American Vernacular English in these novels are ignorant and of
limited education.
1.1.2.2 Syntactic Features
African-American Vernacular English deviates from Standard English in syntax
in several ways. Firstly, linking verbs are usually left out; Secondly, the subjective
7
and the predicate mostly lack concordance; Thirdly, “done” is usually used to
emphasize the action that has been completed, while “been” is often used to
emphasize the action that has started before and continued till now; Fourthly, double
negatives and multiple negatives are constantly used to express affirmation. The
following paragraphs will give some examples.
“…You lucky. You got three left. Three pulling at your skirts and…”
(Morrison, 1987, p5)
Here, the linking verb, “are”, is omitted in the sentence “You (are) Lucky”, and
another linking verb is left out between “Three” and “pulling”.
“…I done forgot, Missis! I won’t say nothing of de sort no more.” (Stowe,
1969, p51)
In the first sentence, “done” is used by Sam to emphasize that he forgot what his
mistress said before. The second sentence uses multiple negatives to express
affirmation.
“Maybe she don’t want to understand,” said Denver. (Morrison, 1987, p4)
As is seen in the sentence above, the predicate “don’t” lacks concordance with
the subjective “she”.
1.1.2.3 Lexical Feature
Owing to the education, the custom, and the cultural peculiarity of Black people,
the vocabulary of African-American Vernacular English is simple and plain. In
addition, a large number of slangs and vulgar words can be found in
African-American Vernacular English, such as doggone, shucks, and so on.
African-American Vernacular English has developed a set of expressions of its
own as well. For example, “monstrous, powerful, tolerable” are used to express
“very”; “How come” is used to express “why”; “reckon” is used to express “think,
suppose, fancy”; “I lay” is used to express “I wager” (Wang Yanhong, 2010).
Moreover, metaphors and shifts of word class are very common in lexical use (ibid).

1.2 Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of the thesis is constructed by a combination of
Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable translation and Lefevere’s Rewriting
theory. The following paragraphs will first introduce the two theories respectively and
8
then explain how this thesis will combine and employ them.
Toury’s theory is introduced first. Gideon Toury proposed that there are different
norms functioning at different stages of the translation process, of which the basic one
is the initial norm. “In keeping with that concept, any translator is called upon to
make an overall choice between two extreme orientations: heavy leaning on the
assumed original, and sweeping adherence to norms which originate and act in the
target culture itself (Toury, 2012, p. 79).”
If the translator chooses to adopt the former instance, the produced translation, or
target text, will “reflect the source text along with the norms embodied in it”, and
successively “the features of SL itself, or of a particular tradition within it,
occasionally even of the source culture at large” (ibid, p.79). Target texts created
under such condition is termed as an adequate translation (Munday, 2012). On the
contrary, if the latter instance was selected by the translator, the ensuing translation
will be constructed under the guidance of the target norms, and “the source text and
its unique web of relations based on SL features” will be degraded to “a secondary
position as a source of constraints” (Toury, 2012, p. 79). This process produces an
acceptable target text (Munday, 2012).
According to Toury (2012, p. 80), when the latter instance is taken up by the
translator, “target-orientedness of this kind may assume more than one shape and the
distance between its realizations and the source-oriented norms may vary in nature
and extent”. To put it differently, ‘Adequacy’ and ‘acceptability’ are on the two poles
of a continuum, as no translation can be completely adequate or completely
acceptable because of inevitable shifts in the translation process.
This part moves on to introduce Lefevere’s rewriting theory. Lefevere studies
translation in the socio-cultural context. He sees translation as rewriting and believes
that “the process resulting in the acceptance or rejection, canonization or
non-canonization of literary works is dominated…by very concrete factors that are
relatively easy to discern as soon as one…begins to address issue such as power,
ideology, institution and manipulation” (Lefevere, 1992, p. 2). Translated literary
texts have to be rewritten in order to conform to the demands of ‘concrete factors’ or
9
its reception in the target culture may encounter great difficulties.
Lefevere (1992，p. 14) cited the description of the Russian Formalists theorists
and depicted literature as “one of the systems that constitute the ‘complex system of
systems’ known as a culture”. In other words, culture is the environment in which the
literary system operates (ibid, p. 14). In Lefevere’s contention, there are two control
factors “that sees to it that the literary system does not fall too far out of step with the
other subsystems” and “one control factor belongs squarely within the literary system;
the other is to be found outside of that system” (1992, p.14). According to Lefevere
(1992, p. 14), the first factor which controls the literary system from the inside is
represented by professionals like critics, reviewers, teachers, and translators. “They
will occasionally repress certain works of literature that are too blatantly opposed to
the dominant concept of what literature should (be allowed to) be – its poetics – and
of what society should (be allowed to) be – ideology (ibid, p.14).” The second factor
is referred to as “patronage” by Lefevere (1992, p. 15), which stands for “something
like the powers (persons, institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing
and rewriting of literature” and usually lays more emphasis on the ideology. In short,
the literary system is controlled by two main factors, the dominant poetics and the
dominant ideology, and the first factor, poetics, attempts to “control the literary
system from the inside within the parameters set by the second factor” (ibid, p. 14).
In this case, translation, or rewriting termed by Lefevere, can either be inspired
by ideological/poetical motivations or have to be produced under ideological/poetical
constraints (Lefevere, 1992).
From the discussion above, it can be seen that Gideon Toury’s continuum of
adequate and acceptable translation is suitable to be used as a ruler to analyze and
identify the translation patterns of different translators and can give a basic
assessment of translators’ stance when translating, namely, whether they favor
foreignization or domestication, and can thus provide a relatively clear demarcation
between different translation versions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which
is quite helpful for further comparison and research. On the other hand, Lefevere’s
rewriting theory looks into the socio-cultural factors that influence the translation,
10
which offers this thesis a valuable perspective for the investigation of the underlying
socio-cultural context that has impacts on the translation of African-American
Vernacular English.
Both Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable translation and Lefevere’s
rewriting theory belong to the framework of descriptive translation studies. Their
major difference is that the former focuses more on the overt phenomenon in the
translation while the latter lays more emphasis on the covert factors that function
underneath the translation phenomenon. They are in a way complementary to each
other. As a result, this thesis combines them to form its theoretical framework. To put
it briefly, the continuum of adequate and acceptable translation is employed in this
thesis as a reference to demonstrate the tendency of the translator in the selection of
translation strategies and methods. The rewriting theory provides a research
perspective in the investigation of the influence imposed on the translation by the
socio-cultural context and this paper looked into the effect of the socio-cultural
context by examining the dominant poetics and the dominant ideology of different
times.

11
Chapter Two Literature Review
This chapter is the literature review of the thesis and contains three parts. The
first section is the literature review of the domestic and foreign researches on the
translation of dialects. It is followed by the literature review of domestic and foreign
researches on African-American Vernacular English. The third section of this chapter
is the literature review of the domestic researches on translating African-American
Vernacular English into Chinese.

2.1 Domestic and Foreign Researches on the Translation of

Dialects
In recent years, foreign researches on dialect translation are mainly carried out
under the framework of descriptive translation studies (DTS). The most common
studies are comparative ones of multiple translation versions. Ala and Salahshoor
(2019) identified and compared the strategies applied by two native Farsi Translators
from different eras in rendering the Chicano English of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and
Men as a sociolect into Farsi. Chaitanya (2018) focused on the techniques of dialect
translation in Telugu novels. Szymanska (2017) discussed problems involved in the
translation of literary works that apply geographical dialects and surveyed the
strategies used by different translators in dealing with geographical dialects in
translation. Paganine (2016) examined the existing Brazilian Portuguese translations
of Thomas Hardy's novels, drawing attention to the specific problem of dialect
translation. Tien (2015) engaged with two Chinese translation versions of Pygmalion
rendered by Lin Yutang and Yang Xianyi, looking into the methods used by these
translators in reproducing the aesthetic effects of the original. Some foreign scholars
used corpus in their research (Herrera, 2017; Di Biase, 2016). In recent two years,
cross-linked researches of translation studies and artificial intelligence are carried out,
studying the methods that can make the machine translation of dialect possible (Harrat,
Meftouh & Smaili, 2019; Baniata, Park Seyoung & Park Seong-Bae, 2018).
Domestic Researches on dialect translation can be divided into three main types.
The first type is research based on literature reviews. Researchers normally
12
summarize existing literature of foreign and domestic researches on dialect translation,
studying features of these studies and trends in them, and then provide advice for
further development based on the disadvantages discovered in former researches (Yu
Jing, 2018; Jiang, 2016). The second type can be assigned to descriptive translation
studies. These researches mainly focus on existing English translation versions of
Chinese literary works which applied dialects, studying translation strategies and
methods used by translators in translating Chinese dialects into English (Huang &
Wang, 2018; Chen Baohong, 2018; Dong Lili, 2017), or examining misinterpretations
in these existing English translation versions (Song, 2015; Hu Zongfeng, 1999). Some
researchers applied corpus in their studies (Huang & Wang, 2018; Chen Baohong,
2018). The third type is much more prescriptive, proposing specific strategies and
methods for dialect translation based on a certain theory or the criticism of translation
versions (Yu Jing, 2015; Wang Enke, 2015; Sang, 2015; Chen Jirong, 2010; Han,
2004, 2002). It is worth noting that scholars doing the third type of research have
different opinions on the translation strategies and methods of dialect translation.
Their judgments on the same translation method can be radically different.
Regarding the further development of the research on dialect translation, Wang
Enke (2015) states that descriptive rather prescriptive approach is an effective way to
further the study of dialect translation. Jiang (2016) points out that the introduction of
new perspectives from other fields will undoubtedly be helpful for researchers to have
a more profound understanding of this complex linguistic phenomenon, namely,
dialects. She also mentioned that descriptions and explanations of more examples of
dialect translation are required in order to further the study (Jiang, 2016). The road
map for descriptive translation studies on dialects used in literary works constructed
by Yu Jing (2018) also provides a detailed network of research directions for further
study of dialect translation.

2.2 Domestic and Foreign Researches on African-American

Vernacular English
In the middle of the 20th century, American sociolinguists started the research on
13
African-American Vernacular English (or Black English). They pointed out that
African-American Vernacular English has developed a set of linguistic rules of its
own and is a special sociolect in America (Yu Chongluo, 1994).
Foreign researches on African-American Vernacular English can be roughly
divided into three categories. The first category focuses on linguistic features of
African-American Vernacular English, analyzing its deviations from standard English
in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and other aspects (Poplack & Tagliamonte,
1994; Richardson, 1991; Denning, 1989; Baugh, 1984). The second category
examines the unique function of African-American Vernacular English in character
building in literary works (Rana, 2016; Dubey, 1998). The third category approaches
African-American Vernacular English from the perspective of sociology, studying
how African-American Vernacular English affects the image of its users (Kurinec &
Weaver, 2019; Massey & Lundy, 2001), or looking into reactions of language users
when they are tagged as African-American Vernacular English users (Young, 2004;
Green & Smart, 1997). There is a gradual turn in foreign researches on
African-American Vernacular English. Researches before the 1990s mainly focus on
linguistic features of African-American Vernacular English, while researches after the
1990s approach this language from social and literary perspectives. Researches in the
1990s proved to be a mixture of both.
There are mainly two types of domestic researches on African-American
Vernacular English. The first type approaches African-American Vernacular English
from a linguistic perspective, studying its features in pronunciation, vocabulary,
grammar, and so on (Zhang Fugong, 2007; Li Jian, 2005; Wang Yusheng, 1999; Yu
Chongluo, 1998, 1994; Liu Jinming, 1996; Jin, 1995; Ruan, 1993; Pan, 1992). Jin
(1995) and Yu Chongluo (1994) also investigated the origin and development of
African-American Vernacular English. The second type of research examines the
function of African-American Vernacular English in artistic creation, focusing mainly
on its function in literary works (Wang Lili, 2010; Wei & Deng, 2008; Zhao Juan &
Feng Yujuan, 2008; Wen Peihong, 2007; Zhen & Tan Yanbao, 2007; Wang Chengyu
& Wang Ping, 2002). Some researches of the second type looked into the aesthetic
14
effect created in the movies when African-American Vernacular English is applied in
these movies (Zhang Liping, 2015; Peng, 2014). Domestic researches on
African-American Vernacular English before the 21st century mainly concentrated on
its linguistic features, and then in the 21st century researchers began to examine the
function of African-American Vernacular English in literary works. The latest
researches initiated the investigation of the role played by this language in movies.
Foreign and domestic studies on African-American Vernacular English both at
first focused on its linguistic features, and then turned to research African-American
Vernacular English from other perspectives. Studies on linguistic features of
African-American Vernacular English proved helpful in defining the concept of
African-American Vernacular English in this paper, meanwhile, linguistic features of
this language investigated by these researches can be used as a reference in analyzing
the translator’s translation strategies. In addition, the function of African-American
Vernacular English in literary works that are recognized by these researches can
demonstrate the significance of studying the translation of African-American
Vernacular English into Chinese.

2.3 Domestic Researches on Translating African-American

Vernacular English into Chinese

Domestic scholars did limited research on translating African-American
Vernacular English into Chinese and only a few relevant works of literature are
available. Existing literature on African-American Vernacular English translation
mostly lingers on the linguistic level, and there is hardly any researcher who noticed
the influence exerted by the socio-cultural context on the translation of
African-American Vernacular English.
Domestic studies addressing African-American Vernacular English translation
can be classified into three categories judging from the papers published in academic
journals. The first category is a comparative study of different translation versions of
a single Black literary work. Researchers doing this type of research normally
evaluate whether each translation is faithful to the original, whether the equivalence is
15
achieved, and whether the translation method adopted by the translator is effective by
comparing and analyzing several typical translated examples on the linguistic level
(Zhao Peixi, 2014; Shi, 2012; Li Xiaoyun, 2011,2007; Tan Yanqing & Chen Ping,
2011; Sun Qing & Yu Zhongli, 2011; Wang Yanhong, 2008). Some of these
Researchers proposed translation principles and translation methods based on their
study (Zhao Peixi, 2014; Li Xiaoyun, 2011, 2007; Sun Qing & Yu Zhongli, 2011;
Wang Yanhong, 2008). Researches belonging to this category have the disadvantage
of selecting translation versions of different times without any proper synchronic or
diachronic classification, overlooking the influence of the socio-cultural context on
the translation. The second type of research studies how to reproduce the aesthetic
effect of African-American Vernacular English in literary works on the linguistic
level and proposes translation methods through a thorough analysis of linguistic
features of this language (Wang Yanhong, 2009; Guo, 2009). This type of study can
provide instructive advice for the translation of African-American Vernacular English,
but translation methods proposed by this kind of research are vague. The third mode
of research approaches the translation of African-American Vernacular English by
analyzing a single Black literary work or a single translation version from a specific
theoretical perspective (Lin Feng & Yue, 2015; Ye Furong, 2015). The problem of
this kind of research lies in the fact that researchers attempt to put forward translation
methods for all African-American Vernacular English texts based on the analysis of a
single text.
Apart from papers published in journals, several doctoral and master theses
addressed the translation of African-American Vernacular English. Authors of these
theses all looked into the translation of African-American Vernacular English by
analyzing and Chinese versions of a single Black literary work from a specific
theoretical perspective. Li Rong (2018) studied Chinese versions of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin from the perspective of relevance theory. Feng Ruowen (2013) compared two
Chinese versions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by two different
translators from several theoretical perspectives. Ma (2013) studied Cheng Shi’s
version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of translation as
16
adaptation and selection. Wang Yanhong (2010) conducted systematic diachronic
research on the translation of African-American Vernacular English from the
perspective of translation ethnics and metonymy. Some of these researchers proposed
translation principles and translation methods of African-American Vernacular
English based on their study (Feng Ruowen, 2013; Wang Yanhong, 2010). Few of
these researchers took the socio-cultural context into consideration. Ma (2013) and
Wang Yanhong (2010) referred to the influence of the socio-cultural context in their
theses, but they both failed to do any systematic synchronic research. Ma (2013)
studied only a single version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, her research on
the influence exerted by the socio-cultural context is restrained to her chosen
translation version and is therefore limited.

2.4 Domestic and Foreign Researches on Toury’s continuum of

adequate and acceptable translation

Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable translation is derived from the
initial norm termed by him. Foreign researches regarding this can be divided into two
main types. The first type is the review and criticism of Toury’s theories (Chang,
2011; Weissbrod, 2009; Flynn, 2007). Chang (2011) revisited Even-Zohar’s
polysystem theory and discussed the complications added to Even-Zohar’s
polysystem theory by Toury when he made the expansion on the concept of adequacy
and acceptability. Weissbrod (2009) compared Toury’s adequate translation with Paul
Ricoeur’s third text and studied the possibility of giving better explanations to
translation phenomena by establishing links between translation studies and the
philosophy of translation. Flynn (2007) proposed that the translatorial ethos should be
taken into consideration in order to get a better understanding of Toury’s translation
norms. The second type of the foreign researches employs Toury’s translation norms
as tools to analyze translation phenomena (Hlavac, 2015; Ngcobo, 2015; Weissbrod,
2008). Hlavac (2015) employed Toury’s translation norms with the initial norm
included in analyzing the decision-making and the translation strategies of translators
working with Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Ngcobo (2015) employed Toury’s
17
theory in constructing the theoretical framework of his paper to figure out whether
Nyembezi's translation is acceptable to the target cultural. Weissbrod (2008)
employed Toury’s translation norms in his thesis and pointed out that apart from the
attitude towards racism in the receiving cultural, translation norms plays a part as well
in dealing with racism in translation.
Domestic researchers mainly take Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable
translation as a tool in their studies (Wang Junping, 2018; Zhu, 2017; Shen, 2016;
Shuai, 2014; Liu Yan, 2012; Zhao Wenjing & Sun Jing, 2012). Wang Junping (2012)
employed the continuum of adequate and acceptable translation to analyze the
translator’s choice of the target language during the Late Qing Period. Zhu (2017)
employed the same theory in classifying the translated works produced during the
three high periods of translation in Chinese history. Shen (2016) used the continuum
in analyzing Han Shiheng’s and Yao Naiqiang’s translation versions of The Scarlet
Letter and declared both versions are acceptable translations. Shuai (2014) applied the
same theory to analyze Giles’s and Minford’s translation versions of Liao Zhai and
pointed out that Giles’s version is acceptable while Minford’s version is adequate. Liu
Yan (2012) employed the same theory to analyze the translation of the names of
Chinese films, pointing out that the translated names of films are adequate from 1949
to 1979 and are acceptable from 1979 to 1989. Zhao Wenjing and Sun Jing (2012)
determined Evan King’s translation of Rickshaw Boy is acceptable translation through
the same theory and analyzed the interlingual rewriting of Evan King based on this. A
minority of domestic researches are the review of Toury’s translation norms. Wang
Chuanying (2013) reviewed Toury’s translation norms from the perspective of
Sociology and proposed that the freedom brought by the initial norm is the
precondition which allows the translator to exert the subjectivity.
To sum up, the existing domestic and foreign researches on Toury’s continuum
of adequate and acceptable translation mainly have two types. The first type is the
review and criticism of the theory and the second type uses the theory as a tool. This
thesis belongs to the second type and applies the continuum of adequate and
acceptable translation as a reference to demonstrate the tendency of the translator in
18
selecting translation strategies and methods.

2.5 Domestic and Foreign Researches on Lefevere’s Rewriting

Theory
Foreign studies on Lefevere’s rewriting theory mainly apply Lefevere’s theory to
analyze certain factors that influence translation (Aboluwade, 2019; Petraru, 2015;
Tamba, 2013; Škultéty, 2009). Aboluwade (2019) studied the script and the stage
performance of Women of Owu under the guidance of the theory of Lefevere and
Bassnett, and proposed that script translation is not only the interlingual translation
but also the adaptation of concrete aspects of societies and cultures. Petraru (2015)
employed Lefevere’s rewriting theory to do some research on the reception of
Stephen Leacock’s works in Romania from the aspects of the selection standard and
the rewriting of the works. Tamba (2013) studied the influence of the ideological
factor on translation in the communist Romania with the help of Lefevere’s rewriting
theory. Škultéty (2009) employed a series of theories with Lefevere’s rewriting theory
included and studied the rewriting of Journey to the West in the western world. A
minority of the reserachers did some review on Lefevere’s rewriting theory to further
illustrate and develop the certain concepts related to the theory (Bai Liping, 2016).
Bai Liping (2016) explored the “professionals” termed by Lefevere and proposed that
they should be studied in a literary translation system instead of a literary system.
Domestic researches on Lefevere’s rewriting theory mostly employ the theory to
investigate certain factors that have impacts on the translation (Liu Nannan, 2015;
Zhang Xiaoman & Hu Zuoyou, 2015; Quan & Ye Xiaobao, 2015; Hu Fangyi, 2014;
Lv & Li Min, 2013; Shu, 2011; Dong Haiya, 2010; Liu Bin, 2010; Zhang Zhichao,
2009; Wen Jun & Lin Fang, 2006; Ni, 2005; Yang, 2001). Liu Nannan (2015) studied
Liu Feng’s version of The Great Gatsby and investigated the influence of ideology,
poetics and patronage on the translation. Zhang Xiaoman and Hu Zuoyou (2015)
studied the influence of ideology and poetics on the translation of Dao De Jing. Quan
and Ye Xiaobao (2015) investigated the impact of ideology and poetics on the
translation of the names of movies and television plays. Hu Fangyi (2014) studied the
19
influence of the ideological factor on the international publicity translation of political
texts. Lv and Li Min (2013) researched the impact of patronage and ideology on the
translation of film subtitles. Shu (2011) studied the influence of the ideology on Lin
Shu’s translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Dong Haiya (2010) investigated the effect of
the ideological factor on the selection and translation strategies of film translation. Liu
Bin (2010) researched the influence of ideology, poetics and patronage on the
translation in China from 1949 to 1966. Zhang Zhichao (2009) studied the impact of
ideology and poetics on the rewriting of Chinese culture in the movie Kung Fu Panda.
Wen Jun and Lin Fang (2006) investigated the influence of ideology and poetics on
the translation of Ode to the West Wind. Ni (2005) studied the effect of ideology and
patronage on the translation and introduction of The Gadfly in China in the 1950s.
Yang (2001) studied the influence of ideology, poetics and patronage on the
translation and proposed that these factors lead to the author’s invisibility and the
infidelity of the translation.
A minority of domestic researches reviews and criticizes Lefevere’s rewriting
theory (Geng, 2017). Geng (2017) pointed out three defects of Lefevere’s rewriting
theory. Firstly, the theory overly emphasizes the ideological and poetical factors while
overlooks the influence of economic factors; secondly, the theory mainly emphasizes
the rewriting of linguistic symbols while ignores the rewriting of non-linguistic
symbols; thirdly, the theory puts stress on the restraints of the system while neglect
the subjectivity of the translators (Geng, 2017).
To sum up, most domestic and foreign researches employ Lefevere’s rewriting
theory to analyze certain factors that influence the translation. This thesis applies the
rewriting theory in the same way and mainly investigates the ideological and poetical
factors.

20
Chapter Three A Synchronic Study of Two Chinese Versions
in the 1950s
This chapter conducts synchronic research on Zhang Wanli’s version and Zhang
Yousong’s version, which were both published in the 1950s. The first section of this
chapter explains the translation pattern of the two translators by demonstrating and
analyzing typical translated examples extracted from the two versions. Next, the
translation strategies and methods of two translators are compared mainly to find the
similarity, with Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable translation as a
reference. The last section investigates possible ideological and poetical factors
influencing the translation of the African-American Vernacular English in the two
versions.

3.1 Introduction of Zhang Wanli’s Version and Zhang Yousong’s

Version
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first translated and introduced to China
by Zhang Wanli in 1954. He used standard Chinese colloquial language to translate
African-American Vernacular English in the book. Two examples are listed below.
Example 1:
ST: “Doan’ hurt me — don’t! I hain’t ever done no harm to a ghos’. I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for ‘em. You go en git in de river agin,
whah you b’longs, en doan’ do nuffn to Ole Jim, ‘at ‘uz alwuz yo’ fren’.”
(Twain, 1981, p. 41)

TT: “千万可别害我呀！我向来没有得罪过鬼魂呀。我向来喜欢死人，我
替死人什么活儿都干过。您顶好还回到您的河里去吧。您可别跟我老吉木
过不去，他永远是您的朋友呀。” (Twain, 1899/1984, pp. 51-52)

Example 2:
ST: “Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’ for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’
Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck;
Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever
had; en you’s de ONLY fren’ ole Jim’s got now.”(Twain, 1981, pp. 88-89)

TT:“再等一会儿，我就要高兴得使劲儿喊了，我就说，这都是哈克的功劳；

21
 我成了自由人了，要是没有哈克，我永远也得不着自由；这都是哈克做的
好事。我吉木一辈子也忘不了你的好处，哈克；你是我吉木顶好的朋友；
你也是我老吉木独一无二的朋友。” (Twain, 1899/1984, p. 110)

As is shown in the above cases, the discourses of African-American Vernacular

English in the original have some deviations from the Standard English, mostly
phonetic and syntactic. For instance, the pronunciations of “th” are all replaced by
other consonants; some consonants at the end of the word are omitted; several long
vowels are substituted by short ones; several verbs don’t agree with the subject. Mark
Twain manufactured a considerable number of deviations to foreground unique
features of the utterance of Jim, a black slave on the run, so as to serve for the
characterization.
However, Zhang Wanli did not preserve deviations of African-American
Vernacular English discourses in the original. No syntactic or phonetic deviations are
found in his translation. His version transformed the seemingly confusing and
complicated non-standard Black discourses into standard, plain Chinese colloquial
speeches. In his translation, Jim talks in short sentences with standard pronunciations
and grammar. He employed Chinese modal particles such as “呀” and “吧”, and some
idiomatic expressions such as “ 顶 好 的 ”, which means “excellent” in Chinese, to
intensify the tune and the appropriateness of the colloquial utterance.
Zhang Yousong translated The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with the help of
Zhang Zhenxian and their version was published in 1956. As is mentioned in the
preface, Zhang Zhenxian only translated a minor part of the original, mainly dealing
with the religious content in the book; Zhang Yousong did most of the work and
processed the translation of Zhang Zhenxian to expunge the traces of co-translation
(Zhang Yousong, n. d.). When tackling with the African-American Vernacular
English, Zhang Yousong resorted to standard Chinese colloquial language. Two
examples are given in the following paragraph.
Example 1:
ST: “Doan’ hurt me — don’t! I hain’t ever done no harm to a ghos’. I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for ‘em. You go en git in de river agin,
whah you b’longs, en doan’ do nuffn to Ole Jim, ‘at ‘uz alwuz yo’ fren’.”
22
 (Twain, 1981, p. 41)

TT: “别害我呀！我从来没得罪过鬼。我向来喜欢死人，总要拼命帮他们
的忙。你是从河里出来的，还是回河里去吧，可别伤害老吉姆，他向来是
你的朋友哪。” (Twain, 1885/2005, p. 50)

Example 2:
ST: “Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’ for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’
Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck;
Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever
had; en you’s de ONLY fren’ ole Jim’s got now.” (Twain, 1981, pp. 88-89)

TT: “过不了一会儿，我就会高兴地大嚷起来了，我会说，这全是仗着哈
克帮忙；现在我是个自由人了，要不是有了哈克，我是得不到自由的；全
靠哈克帮忙。吉姆一辈子也忘不了你，哈克，你真是吉姆一辈子没碰到过
的好朋友呀，现在老吉姆也就只有你这一个朋友了。” (Twain, 1885/2005,
p. 108)

The above examples demonstrate that neither phonetic deviation nor syntactic
deviation presented in Zhang Yousong’s translation, despite there are quite a few
deviations of such in the original. Zhang Yousong used standard Chinese colloquial
language to translate African-American Vernacular English. In his version, Jim
speaks standard oral Chinese, and the foregrounding produced by non-standard Black
English in the original is lost. Chinese modal particles, such as “呀”, “哪”, “吧”, serve
as idiomaticity amplifiers in his translation. Colloquialisms such as “ 大 嚷 ”, which
means “shout” in Chinese, are employed to make the discourses read smoothly and
obediently.

3.2 A comparison of the Two Versions in Translating

African-American Vernacular English

This section compares the two selected versions published in the 1950s. First,
two translated discourses of the same source text are given below to perform as an
example for comparison.
Example 1:
ST; “Doan’ hurt me — don’t! I hain’t ever done no harm to a ghos’. I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for ‘em. You go en git in de river agin,

23
 whah you b’longs, en doan’ do nuffn to Ole Jim, ‘at ‘uz alwuz yo’ fren’.”
(Twain, 1981, p. 41)

TT1: “千万可别害我呀！我向来没有得罪过鬼魂呀。我向来喜欢死人，我
替死人什么活儿都干过。您顶好还回到您的河里去吧。您可别跟我老吉木
过不去，他永远是您的朋友呀。” (Twain, 1899/1984, pp. 51-52)

TT2: “别害我呀！我从来没得罪过鬼。我向来喜欢死人，总要拼命帮他们
的忙。你是从河里出来的，还是回河里去吧，可别伤害老吉姆，他向来是
你的朋友哪。” (Twain, 1885/2005, p. 50)

By analyzing the example displayed above, it is obvious that both Zhang Wanli
and Zhang Yousong used the standard colloquial language method in translating
African-American Vernacular English in the original. The translated Black English
discourses in both versions are all composed of short sentences, and the translation
has all the ease and fluency which the original does not possess. Both translators
employed Chinese modal particles such as “ 呀 ” and “ 吧 ” in their translations to
reinforce the colloquial feature of the utterance.
Toury’s initial norm reflects the general tendency of the translator, who can
either obey the norms of the source text or conform to the norms of the target
language. Apparently, both Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong subject themselves to
the norms of the latter and abandoned the deviations which are intentionally produced
by Mark Twain. In this case, both of them produced acceptable translations, and
hence, their translations are drifted more towards the “acceptability pole” of the
continuum of adequate and acceptable translation.
To sum up, both translators favor the norms of the target language more than
those of the source text. Consequently, they produced acceptable translations and
failed to reproduce the deviations in the original to achieve foreground effects. Both
Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong used the standard colloquial language method in
translating African-American Vernacular English, and their translation is very similar,
with no obvious differences to be noted. It is notable that both of the two typical and
well-known versions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn released in the 1950s
shares great similarity in the translation strategy and method. The thesis will approach

24
the underlying reasons for this phenomenon through an investigation of the
socio-cultural context of the time in the following section.

3.3 Ideological and Poetical Influence in the 1950s

3.3.1 The Viewpoint of “Literature Serving Politics”

After 1949, China gradually established a socialist political ideology based on
Marxism-Leninism, and this ideology occupied the leading position of the cultural
system (Zha, 2004). In the early 1950s, the literary concept of socialist realism was
introduced from the Soviet Union to China. Socialist realism, as a guiding theory for
literature and art production, originally contains the implication of political poetics,
because it has existed as a policy concept since it came into being and it constantly
holds the power to standardize and evaluate literary and artistic works without a
proper and rational reason (ibid). In the 1950s, Socialist realism, combined with the
idea of building proletarian literature, which was proposed by Mao Zedong in his
Speech at the Yanan Literature and Art Forum, and reinforced by the criteria of
“political criterion first, artistic criterion second” in literature and art, became the
authoritative power for political ideology to manipulate literature and art (ibid). As a
result, literature and art were brought to serve politics and the viewpoint of literature
serving politics was generally accepted and incarnated as the slogan “literature serves
politics” in the Chinese literary circle.
In this case, political ideology and poetics in the 1950s conspired with each other
in the selection of literary works for translation (ibid). Literary translation in the
1950s mainly introduced Soviet literary works to fulfill political needs (Wang
Yanhong, 2010). Two-thirds of translated literary works at that time are originally
written in Russian, while less than 20 percent of introduced literary works are from
England, America, France, and Japan combined (Li Jingduan, 1988). Among the
translated European and American literary works were mostly classic ones. They
proved themselves to be qualified enough to be translated because some of these
works were praised by Marx and Engels; some of them were realism works; some of
them possessed advanced significance against feudalism in terms of ideological
25
content; some of them revealed the corruption and atrocity of capitalism (Zha, 2004).
Other European and American works, which were considered qualified enough to be
translated, were either ones that unmasked the decadent nature of capitalism or those
which portrayed miserable lives of laboring people at the lowest level of the social
ladders (ibid).
At that time literary translation was supposed to serve political needs, and the
selection of European and American literature to be translated was mainly determined
by the theme rather than the artistry of the work. Consequently, translators focused
largely on introducing the ideological content of the work, and preserving the artistry
was of secondary concern.
The prefaces of both versions indicated the political leanings of the two
translators and illustrated the reasons and significances of their translations. Zhang
Wanli (1954) praised Mark Twain for being a prominent and valorous satirist as well
as an eminent novelist of the realistic school in the first part of his preface, declaring
that Mark Twain was a committed democrat who firmly took a humanistic stance in
fighting against the capitalism. Zhang Wanli (1954) further added that Mark Twain’s
best works unexceptionally demonstrated his cordial love for toiling masses and
lodged his protest against all evil and heinousness in the world. Zhang Wanli (1954)
went on in his preface to point out that Mark Twain vividly presented how the alleged
American democracy malevolently and ruthlessly deprived innocent Black people of
their rights to live as free and independent individuals in The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. When Huckleberry Finn was engaged in varying experiences in his
adventure, he encountered many different people, among who there were two crafty
swindlers, the “king” and the “duke”, an old Colonel named Sherburn who killed a
drunken old man for being scolded, two clans of despotic aristocracies who were
engaged in nothing else but killing each other on account of the feud, and all these
people Finn met revealed the terrifying dark side of American social life (Zhang
Wanli, 1954). At the end of his preface, Zhang Wanli (1954) proposed that Mark
Twain earned his fame as being a remarkable realistic writer despite malicious
aspersions from corrupted Bourgeois literati, and thus it is of great significance to
26
translate and introduce his works in a full-scale manner. Furthermore, Zhang Wanli
(1954) discussed a lot about the progressive ideology of The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn in his preface but he did not spend any words on discussing the
artistry of the literary work, let alone the unique features of its language. Zhang
Yousong’s preface shares a very similar feature with that of Zhang Wanli. In the
preface, Zhang Yousong (n. d.) extolled the fiction for its distinct theme of
anti-racism and acknowledged Mark Twain’s effort in arousing public awareness of
black people’s tribulations and in laying foundation for Black Liberation despite he
failed to seize a right class viewpoint. Zhang Yousong (n. d.) appreciated Mark
Twain’s severe criticism on capitalism and racism as well as his penetrating,
acrimonious irony on the political corruption, economic disorder and speculative
atmosphere of the American people. Zhang Yousong (n. d.) further analogized Mark
Twain’s poignant accusation on religious chaos, distorted education, Bourgeois
democratic election and racial discrimination as a sharp surgery knife, which
dissected all the mess of the society to alert the people. Moreover, Zhang Yousong (n.
d.) shared with Zhang Wanli (1954) an extremely similar interpretation of characters
in the book, such as the two sophisticated impostors, the old Colonel who kills but get
away with murder, two clans of aristocracies who consider killing and fighting for the
sake of feud as a matter of course and so on. Yet Zhang Yousong spared not even a
word on discussing the artistry of the language of the original. In a word, both
translators discussed much about the theme and the ideological content of The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in their prefaces while they did not mention not in
the slightest the aesthetic values of the language of it. This reflected that they focused
more on conveying the idea and content of the original instead of preserving the
artistry of the work. Their prefaces were more like defenses for the legitimacy of their
translation under the pressure of the political ideology and poetics of that time.
As both translators are struggling to defend the legitimacy of their translations,
the communication of the progressive meaning embedded in the book outweighs the
reproduction of the unique language features in the original. This can be seen in their
translation. An example is demonstrated below:
27
Example 1:
ST: “What do dey stan’ for? I’se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out
wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’
broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de
raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears come,
en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you
wuz thinkin’ ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat
truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey
fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed.” (Twain, 1981, p. 85)

TT1:“它们指的是些什么吗？我来告诉你吧。我因为拚命地划木筏，又使
劲地喊你，累得我简直快要死了。后来我睡着了的时候，我的心差不多已
经碎了，因为把你丢掉了，我真是伤心透了，我就不再管我的木筏会遇到
什么危险了。等我醒过来的时候，看见你又回来了，平平安安地回来了，
我的眼泪都流出来了。我心里有说不出来的感激，我恨不得跪下去用嘴亲
亲你的脚。可是你却想方设法，编出一套瞎话来骗我老吉木。那边那一堆
是些肮脏的东西；肮脏的东西就是那些往朋友脑袋上抹屎、让人家觉得难
为情的人。”(Twain, 1899/1984, p. 106)

TT2:“这些东西指的是什么？我来告诉你吧。我因为拼命地划木排，又大
声喊你，简直快累死了，后来我困得打瞌睡的时候，我因为你不见了，真
是伤心透顶，我就连我自己和木排要出什么岔子都懒得管它，就那么睡了。
后来我一醒过来，瞧见你平平安安，全须全尾地回来了，我就掉下眼泪来，
简直恨不得跪下来亲你的脚，因为我简直谢天谢地，高兴透了。可是你就
光想着怎么扯个谎来拿老吉姆开玩笑。这些乱七八糟的东西都是废物；废
物就是那些往朋友头上抹屎、叫他们丢脸的人。”(Twain, 1885/2005, pp.
103-104)

The above example shows that both translators transformed the non-standard
Black English into fluent and standard Chinese colloquial language. Both target texts
convey the meaning of the original and portray an image of a black slave, Jim, who is
loyal, honest, frank, and kind. He was concerned about Huck when they got separated
in the fog and felt heart-broken when he thought that he had lost Huck. He valued
Huck more than anything else and became ecstatic when Huck found him. On the
contrary, Huck made fun of him by pretending nothing happened and telling him
everything was his dream when they meet again, making him look like a fool when he
trusted the lie and tried to explain this so-called dream. This paragraph shows that
black people can be good and kind while white people can do bad deeds, indicating
that White Supremacy is ridiculous, and this is one of the major points of the
28
ideological content of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both target texts convey
the same information as the source text, but they all lost the unique features of Black
English and reads as if a white person is talking. In other words, the distinct
characteristics of African-American Vernacular English are lost in the translation as
no reproduction or mimicking of phonetic and syntactic deviations in the source text
can be found. As a result, the Jim in the target texts does not have an as highlighted
social identity as that in the original. The reproduction of the rhetoric features of the
language is overlooked in the translations of both translators.
Overall, literary translation was meant to serve politics in the 1950s and the
translation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was no exception. Hence both
Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong concentrated on communicating the progressive
significance of the original other than on reproducing the artistry of the language.
Accordingly, they used standard Chinese colloquial language to translate
African-American Vernacular English in the original.

3.3.2 Language as a Tool

Before the 1980s, the Chinese literary circle always put the ideological content
of literature in the first place and regarded language as a puppet of the content and a
tool to express the main idea, paying little attention to the artistry of the language
itself (Wang Yanhong, 2010).
From ancient times, Chinese intellectuals had taken language as a medium in
transmitting thoughts and had deemed that language is subordinate to thought (Gao,
2001). In modern history, the Chinese started learning from the westerners and
introduced new terms and concepts on large scale, however, their view of language
failed to catch up with the West and remained traditional; as a consequence of this,
intellectuals who initiated the cultural change in modern China such as Liang Qichao,
Yan Fu, Hu Shi, Lu Xun, Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu and so on still considered language
as a tool (ibid). After the founding of the PRC, Marxism became the guiding
philosophy in China, but it was tinged with Soviet characteristics, so in terms of the
essence of language, the views of Lenin and Stalin, who both thought of language as a

29
tool, were quite influential (ibid). Meanwhile, the prevailing idea in the Chinese
literary circle was the proletarianization of literature, and the thought of literature
serving politics came into existence and was widely supported (Wang Yanhong,
2010). In this socio-cultural context, the view of language as a tool achieved
dominance. Accordingly, the exploration for the internal nature and law of literary
language itself was given up (ibid). As a result, translators and writers of the time
hardly paid any attention to the artistry of the language. Under this circumstance, it
was no surprise that both Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong chose to forgo the
reproduction of the deviations in the source text. This can be demonstrated through
their translation as well. Below is an example of such.
Example 1:
ST: “Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat ‘uz bein’
sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, ‘Go on en save me,
nemmine ‘bout a doctor f’r to save dis one?’ Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer?
Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn’t! WELL, den, is JIM gywne to say it?
No, sah — I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place ‘dout a DOCTOR, not if it’s
forty year!” (Twain, 1981, p. 275)

TT1:“哼，我看是这么回事，哈克：咱们倒过来看一看，假如放出来的那
个人是他，咱们哥们儿有一个挨了枪的话，他会不会说：‘往前走吧，救
人就救到底吧，用不着去请大夫来救这个家伙啊’？汤姆·莎耶少爷是那
种人吗？他会说那种话吗？你放心吧，他不会的！那么，好了，我吉木能
说那种话吗？甭打算，先生——大夫一时不来，我绝不离开这儿一步；哪
怕等上四十年我都不在乎！”(Twain, 1899/1984, p. 346)

TT2:“嗯，照我看是这样的，哈克。要是逃出来的是他，伙计们有一个挨
了枪。他会不会说：‘快跑，就我的命要紧，用不着找大夫来给这家伙治
伤’？汤姆·索亚少爷是这种人吗？他会说这种话吗？管保不会！那么，
我吉姆能说这种话吗？不会，您哪——要不找个大夫来看看，我连一步也
不肯离开这儿；哪怕要等几十年也不要紧！”(Twain, 1885/2005, p. 343)

This example shows that both translators chose to translate non-standard

African-American Vernacular English into plain, fluent Chinese colloquial language.
The source text is what Jim said when Huck asked him about whether they should
stop to find a doctor to treat Tom Sawyer, who got shot in the leg when they running
away from the farm. It is meant to describe the black slave, Jim, as a selfless and

30
grateful person who is willing to take the risk of being captured again just to trade for
a chance to treat Tom’s wound. The source text also created considerable deviations
such as replacing “th” by “d” and substituting the short vowels for the long ones. Both
target texts can convey that image, but they failed again in recreating the features of
the Black English with no reproduction or mimicking of the deviations in the original
to be found, and hence, they cannot make the black identity of Jim stand out when
comparing with the original as Jim’s words show no obvious differences with those of
the white people in the translation. To put it short, both Zhang Wanli and Zhang
Yousong take language as a tool of conveying ideas and images but both of them
ignored the significance of African-American Vernacular English in portraying
characters and highlighting their social identities.

3.3.3 The Standardization of Speech

With literature becoming a part of the national propaganda machine after the
establishment of the PRC, the authority of literary language outweighed its literariness
and liberty, and this kind of imbalance would exist for a long period in the time to
come (Wang Yanhong, 2010; Wang Zhong, 2008). A set of rigidly coded language
systems, thinking patterns, and writing modes, together with an extremely fixed
connection between the signifier and the signified, were developed in this situation
(Wang Zhong, 2008).
In 1955, an editorial of People’s Daily pointed out that promoting the
standardization of speech had become an urgent task in order to propel the socialist
construction and the socialist transformation in China. This mission was assigned to
the literature (Wang Yanhong, 2010). The editorial (1955) further stated that the
Chinese Communist Party had always been emphasizing the purity of the language
and that everyone who spoke and wrote, especially those who played an exemplary
role in language use, should take note of the immaculacy and correctness of their
discourses. The editorial (1955) went on that the standardization of speech must rest
on tangible things, which in the first place were all works, especially literary works. If
writers and translators ignored the language standard in their productions, the

31
outcome would be inestimably catastrophic, and therefore they must be restricted with
their language during literary creation (People’ Daily, 1955). As a result of this
demanding restriction, Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong had to give up the artistry of
the language of the original text and used standard Chinese colloquial language in
translating African-American Vernacular English. The next paragraphs will make
further discussion by analyzing a set of translated texts displayed as an example.
Example 1:
ST: “Doan’, you ‘member de, house dat was float’n down de river,, en dey wuz
a man in dah,, kivered up,, en I went in en unkivered, him and didn’, let you
come in?, Well, den, you kin git yo’, money when you wants it,, kase dat wuz
him.” (Twain, 1981, pp. 292-293)

TT1:“你记不记得由河上漂下来的那间屋子，里头躺着一个人，脸上盖着
一块布，我钻进去，把布揭开看了看，可是不让你看？你要是要钱的话，
你就能把钱拿到手，因为那个人就是你爸爸。”(Twain, 1899/1984, p. 369)

TT2:“你还记得那个顺着大河往下漂的房子吗？那里面有个人，身上蒙着
一块布，我上里面去把那块布揭开，不让你进去，你还记得吗？得啦，你
要 钱 的 时 候 就 可 以 取 得 到 ， 因 为 那 个 死 人 就 是 你 爸 爸 。” (Twain,
1885/2005, p. 365)

Obviously, Mark Twain made considerable deviations deliberately in the source

text to present the unique sociolect to the readers so as to highlight the black identity
of its speaker, Jim. For example, “you” does not agree with “wants”; “and” is
replaced by “en” in order to correspond with the omission of ending consonants in
Black English; “that” is replaced by “dah” as in Black English the voiced consonant
of “th” is substituted by the voiced consonant of “d”. However, no mistakes can be
found in both translated texts, and they can be seen as model texts for the modern
Chinese language. This might reflects the influence of standardization of speech on
translating. As is mentioned in the previous part of this section, the literature was
assigned with the task of promoting standard speech in the 1950s. Both translators, as
literature workers, had to shoulder their responsibility and were restricted in the use of
language when translating. As a result, they made no attempts at reproducing or
mimicking the deviations in the source text and used standard and fluent Chinese

32
colloquial language to translate African-American Vernacular English.

3.4 Summary
This chapter carries out synchronic research on Zhang Wanli’s version and
Zhang Yousong’s version, which were both published in the 1950s. Both Zhang
Wanli and Zhang Yousong applied the standard colloquial language method when
translating Black English in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and spent no effort
on the reproduction of the unique features of African-American Vernacular English
speeches.
This chapter goes on to investigate ideological and poetical factors in the 1950s
to explain the congruence in two translators’ selection of translation strategies and
methods. According to the findings, this congruity might result from three aspects.
The first one is that politics exert a powerful influence on literature and art in the
1950s and literature was brought to serve political needs. In this case, literary
translation had an apparent leaning on Soviet literature while the translation of
western literature had to defend its legitimacy by emphasizing the accordance of the
ideological content of the literary work with the domestic dominant ideology. This
consists with the situation that both Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong discussed a lot
in their prefaces about the theme of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The second
respect is the way in which the literary workers in the 1950s regarded the language.
At that time, the prevailing view was to take language as a tool in communicating
ideas and contents while the aesthetic values of the language itself were overlooked.
Last but not least, literature was assigned with an important task of standardizing the
speech and was put under strict regulation of related government departments. Under
these circumstances, both translators had to translate in standard, fluent Chinese.

33
Chapter Four A Synchronic Study of Two Chinese Versions
after the 1980s
This chapter carries out a synchronic study on Cheng Shi’s version and Xu
Ruzhi’s version, which were both published in the new period. The first section
analyzes several translated examples retrieved from the two versions to shed light on
the translation pattern of Cheng and Xu. The next section employs Toury’s continuum
of adequate and acceptable translation to compare the translation strategies and
methods of the two translators with the main target to identify their similarity. This
section gives a brief discussion on their difference as well. The following parts
discuss possible socio-cultural factors that affect the translation of Black English after
1980.

4.1 Introduction of Cheng Shi’s Version and Xu Ruzhi’s Version

Cheng Shi’s version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published
in 1989. Unlike his predecessors, Cheng Shi used a completely different method,
namely, the malapropism method, to tackle African-American Vernacular English in
the original. The next paragraphs will exemplify two translated examples extracted
from Cheng’s version.
Example 1:
ST: “Doan’, hurt me — don’t! I hain’t ,ever done no harm to a ghos’,. I alwuz
liked, dead people,, en done all I could for ,‘em. You go en git, in de river agin,
whah you b’longs,, en doan’, do nuffn to Ole Jim,, ‘at ‘uz alwuz yo’, fren’.”
(Twain, 1981, p. 41)

TT: “别省(伤)我——别！我冲乃(从来)布(不)曾难为过一个鬼。自(死)人我
冲乃喜欢，尽力帮他们的忙。你回河里去吧，河史(是)你的家。别省我老
杰姆，他冲乃都是你的奔(朋)友。” (Twain, 1985/1989, p. 46)

Example 2:
ST: “Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’, for joy,, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’,
Huck; I’s a free man,, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’, ben for Huck;
Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit, you, Huck; you’,s de bes’, fren’ Jim’,s ever
had; en you’,s de ONLY fren’ ,ole Jim’s got now.” (Twain, 1981, pp. 88-89)

34
 TT: “布(不)用陀旧(多久)，我就会快活得叫起来，我约(要)说：这陀跪(多
亏)哈克。我史过(是个)自由人啦，要布史有哈克，我这一攀(辈)子也布用
想自由；哈克帮了我的忙，杰姆我永世忘布了你哈克；你史我杰姆顶好的
奔(朋)友；我劳(老)杰姆此刻只有你这过奔友。” (Twain, 1985/1989, p. 94)

As is analyzed in the previous chapter, Mark Twain deliberately produced some

deviations from the Standard English in the discourse of Jim, a black slave who is on
the run, so as to serve for the figure-creation. These deviations are mainly phonetic or
syntactic, including the replacement of the pronunciation of “th” by other consonants,
the omission of ending consonants, substitutions of short vowels for long ones, and
subject-verb disagreements. All of them indicate Jim’s low social status and poor
education.
Cheng Shi used the malapropism method to translate African-American
Vernacular English in the original. Malapropism is a rhetorical device that uses wrong
Chinese characters or words on purpose to create a burlesque. In Cheng’s translation,
he deliberately used wrong words or characters and the right ones were placed in
parentheses following these errors. Repeated errors in the same paragraph were not
followed by correction parentheses. By resorting to malapropism, Cheng tried to
retain the form of the source text by producing some similar deviations between black
slave’s translated discourses and standard Chinese colloquial language to those
between African-American Vernacular English and Standard English. Some of the
Chinese correct characters were replaced by ones possessing similar pronunciations,
such as “ 劳 ( 老 )” in Example 2, or by homophones, such as “ 布 ( 不 )” in Example 1.
Other deviations appear between Chinese characters which have similar structures and
forms, such as “ 攀(辈)” in Example 2. Cheng also sought to imitate the deviations of
consonants in the original, such as “冲乃(从来)” in Example 1. In addition, those errors
deliberately made in black speeches are attempts of recreating the image of a
low-status black slave with little education.
Xu Ruzhi’s version was first published in 1995. He translated African-American
Vernacular English in the original in a way that can be seen as a mixture of the
malapropism method and the standard colloquial language method. That is to say, he

35
processed some of the African-American Vernacular English discourses with the
malapropism method while translating the rest into standard Chinese colloquial. Two
examples are listed below.
Example 1:
ST: “Doan’, hurt me — don’t! I hain’,t ever done no harm to a ghos’,. I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for ,‘em. You go en git ,in de river agin,
whah you b’,longs, en doan’ ,do nuffn to Ole Jim, ,‘at ‘uz alwuz yo’, fren’.”
(Twain, 1981, p. 41)

TT: “别害我，别害我！我从尾(未)伤害过一个鬼魂。我一相(向)喜欢死人，
尽力为他们做毫(好)事。你回到河里去吧，那是你的地方，可碧(别)伤害
老杰姆，他可丛(从)来都是你的好朋友。” (Twain, 1965/1998, p. 39)

Example 2:
ST: “Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’,n’ for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’,
Huck; I’s a free man,, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’, ben for Huck;
Huck done it. Jim won’,t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’, fren’ ,Jim’s ever
had; en you’s de ONLY fren’ ole Jim’s got now.” (Twain, 1981, pp. 88-89)

TT: “马上，我就要欢呼啦。我要说，这一切，都得归功赫克。我是个自
由人啦。可要不是赫克，我哪里会自由呢。全是赫克干成功的。杰姆永生
永世忘不掉你，赫克。你是我最好的朋友，你也是我杰姆唯一的一个朋
友。” (Twain,1965/1998 , p.82)

In Xu’s translation, some of the African-American Vernacular English

discourses are translated into standard Chinese colloquial language, as is the case of
Example 2, and others are dealt with by malapropism, as is the situation of Example 1.
As is shown in Example 1, Xu resorted to the malapropism method to simulate
language deviations in the original. Homophones such as “丛(从)”, and characters with
similar pronunciations such as “ 尾 ( 未 )” and “ 毫 ( 好 )”, were used. Example 2
demonstrates a different method adopted by Xu in translation. Jim’s words were
translated into standard Chinese colloquial language with no deviations to be found.
Modal particles like “啦”, “呢” were used to reinforce colloquial features.

36
4.2 A Comparison of the Two Versions in Translating African-

American Vernacular English

This section first puts on two sets of translated texts which are extracted from
Cheng Shi’s version and Xu Ruzhi’s version respectively for comparison. Each set of
the translated texts corresponds to the same source text in The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.
Example 1:
ST: “Doan’, hurt me — don’t!, I hain’,t ever done no harm to a ghos’,., I alwuz
liked dead people,, en done all I could for ,‘em., You go en git in de river agin,
whah you b’,longs, en doan’, do nuffn to Ole Jim,, ‘at ‘uz alwuz yo’, fren’.”
(Twain, 1981, p. 41)

TT1: “别省(伤)我——别！我冲乃(从来)布(不)曾难为过一个鬼。自(死)人
我冲乃喜欢，尽力帮他们的忙。你回河里去吧，河史(是)你的家。别省我
老杰姆，他冲乃都是你的奔(朋)友。” (Twain, 1985/1989, p. 46)

TT2: “别害我，别害我！我从尾(未)伤害过一个鬼魂。我一相(向)喜欢死人，
尽力为他们做毫(好)事。你回到河里去吧，那是你的地方，可碧(别)伤害
老杰姆，他可丛(从)来都是你的好朋友。” (Twain, 1965/1998, p. 39)

Example 2:
ST: “Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’, for joy,, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts
o’ ,Huck; I’s a free man,, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it, hadn’, ben for Huck;
Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you,,, Huck; you’s de bes’, fren’, Jim’s ever
had;, en you’s de ONLY fren’, ole Jim’s got now.” (Twain, 1981, pp. 88-89)

TT1: “布(不)用陀旧(多久)，我就会快活得叫起来，我约(要)说：这陀跪(多
亏)哈克。我史过(是个)自由人啦，要布史有哈克，我这一攀(辈)子也布用
想自由；哈克帮了我的忙，杰姆我永世忘布了你哈克；你史我杰姆顶好的
奔(朋)友；我劳(老)杰姆此刻只有你这过奔友。” (Twain, 1985/1989, p. 94)

TT2: “马上，我就要欢呼啦。我要说，这一切，都得归功赫克。我是个自
由人啦。可要不是赫克，我哪里会自由呢。全是赫克干成功的。杰姆永生
永世忘不掉你，赫克。你是我最好的朋友，你也是我杰姆唯一的一个朋
友。” (Twain,1965/1998 , p.82)

From the examples demonstrated above, it can be deduced that Cheng Shi tried
the malapropism method to preserve rhetorical effects and social functions, at least

37
part of them, of the Black discourse in the original. His translation creates a sense of
unease similar to the original discourse in reading, and his translation can be seen as
an attempt at mimicking some of the deviations presented in the original. Xu only
treated part of the Black speeches in the original with malapropisms, while turning the
rest into fluent Chinese colloquialism. Xu’s translation shows ambivalence in the
treatment of original African-American Vernacular English discourses because some
of them are transformed into smooth standard Chinese oral language (Example 2)
while the rest are imitated (Example 1) in order to reproduce the rhetoric effects of the
language in the original.
A closer comparison between the two versions shows that there is a difference in
the employment of malapropism between Cheng and Xu. To further demonstrate this
discrepancy, this research carries out a quantitative study on the frequency of the use
of the malapropism method in Cheng’s version and in Xu’s version. The translated
Black English discourses in both versions were separately extracted and analyzed
with corpus analysis software, AntConc. The result shows that there are 1056
instances of malapropism in Cheng’s version while only 234 instances of
malapropism are detected in Xu’s version. Cheng applied the malapropism method
nearly five times more frequently than Xu.
This thesis now again refers to Toury’s initial norm and his continuum of
adequate and acceptable translation to explicate the translation strategies adopted by
both translators. As is mentioned before, the initial norm reflects the general tendency
of the translator, who can either submit to the norms of the source text or conform to
those of the target language. Cheng used malapropism to simulate the deviations in
the source text and to produce an unsmooth language variety in the target text. In this
sense, he tended to obey the norms of the original and produced an adequate
translation. Xu translated some of the Black English discourses into standard Chinese
colloquial language while processed the rest with malapropism to maintain the form
of the original. In this case, he showed a wavering orientation and was caught
between the norms of the source text and those of the target language. As a result, his
translation is considered to be somewhere between an adequate translation and an
38
acceptable translation.
In summary, Cheng favored the norms of the source text while Xu preferred to
take a position somewhere between the norms of the source text and those of the
target language. This led to the fact that Cheng produced, in some way, an adequate
translation as he strived to manufacture language deviations and to preserve the
artistry of the original through the malapropism method. On the other hand, Xu’s
translation is like an intermediate between an adequate translation and an acceptable
translation as he translated the African-American Vernacular English partly with the
standard Chinese colloquial language method and partly with the malapropism
method. It is worth noting that both versions paid attention to the norms of the source
text and made some attempts to fulfill their requirements, but Xu still made a
compromise to the norms of the target language. The possible underlying reason will
be given in the following sections of this chapter.

4.3 The Influence of the Socio-cultural Context

4.3.1 The Influence of a New Policy to Create Flourishing Literature

and Art
The year 1978 witnessed the inauguration of the Reform and Open-up, and
thereupon great changes took place in China. In order to promote domestic art
development and scientific progress, the central government put forward a new policy
of “letting a hundred flowers blossom, a hundred schools of thought contend”. The
implementation of this new policy greatly lessened the constraints on literary and
artistic creations. Meanwhile, the opening-up policy loosened the restrictions on
cultural communications between China and foreign countries.
Under these circumstances, translators with a keen sense of cultural exchanges
between China and the outside world showed great enthusiasm in literature translation
and introduction and worked with passion to break down the isolation of Chinese
literature with modern western literature (Li Jingduan, 2005). The outcome of their
effort can be reflected by the publication situation in the publishing industry of that
time. According to Li Jingduan (1988), translated foreign literary works published
39
within the seven years from 1980 to 1986 involved nearly 90 countries, and literary
works from Britain, America, France, and Japan took up almost 60 percent of all
introduced literature.
After 1980, literary translation prospered in a relatively tolerant environment for
literary and artistic creations. In this case, both Cheng Shi and Xu Ruzhi had more
freedom in translation than their predecessors, and hence they both tried a more
radical translation method, malapropism. A set of translated texts extracted from their
versions are listed below.
Example 1
ST: “What do dey stan’ for? I’se gwyne to tell you., When I got all wore out
wid work, en wid de callin’ for you,, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’
broke bekase you wuz los’,, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de
raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears
come,, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En
all you wuz thinkin’ ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a
lie., Dat truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de
head er dey fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed.,”(Twain, 1981, p.85)

TT1:“它们代表什摸（么）？我来讲给你听。我一边照管木坯（排），一
边叫你，乏得布（不）行，我睡着了，当时我的醒（心）都碎啦，云（因）
为你走散（失）啦。我自己，还有这木坯，会布会出事，我都布圆益（不
愿意）去想啦。我醒来一看，你并并（平平）安安回来啦，布由得直荡
（淌）眼泪，我满醒感谢，恨布得跪下来亲亲你的脚。可你，你想的史
（是）怎样撒谎，作弄我劳（老）杰姆。那些东西史（是）垃圾，那种往
奔（朋）友脑袋上泼脏水，叫他们丢人现眼的，也史垃圾。” (Twain,
1985/1989, pp. 90-91)

TT2:“这些个事情指的是什么嘛？我要对你说的。我使劲划，使劲喊你，
累得没得命了。睡的时候，因为丢失了你，我心都率（碎）了，对自己，
对木筏子，我也不放在心上了。一醒来，发现你可回来了，一切平安无事，
我禁不住流出了眼泪，为了谢天谢地，我恨不得双膝跪下，吻你的脚。可
是啊，你心里想的只是怎样编一个荒（谎）来糊弄老杰姆。那边一堆残枝
败叶是肮脏的东西。肮脏的东西也就是人家把脏东西往朋友的脑袋上道
（倒），叫人家为他害少（臊）的人嘛。”(Twain,1965/1998 , p. 78)

It is obvious that both translators used malapropism in translating Jim’s words.

Both translated texts depict an image of a black slave that is loyal, honest, frank, and
kind. He was concerned about Huck when they got separated in the fog and felt

40
heart-broken when he thought that he had lost Huck. He valued Huck more than
anything else and was very grateful and excited when Huck returned. However, Huck
played a joke on him by pretending nothing happened and telling him everything was
his dream when they meet again, making him look like a fool when he trusted the lie
and tried to explain this so-called dream. This plot shows that black people can be
good and kind while white people are not always upright, suggesting that White
Supremacy is absurd. The translation successfully conveyed this idea of the original
work. In addition, the translated texts read uneasy and are different from the words of
the white people in the translated versions. This means that both translated discourses
can underline the unique social identity of the speaker. This reflects that in a tolerant
environment for literary and artistic creations, both Cheng and Xu can do more than
just transferring the ideological content of the original, that is, they can mimic the
features of African-American Vernacular English, or they can at least achieve
foregrounding to highlight the unique identity of the black people in The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn.
However, it should be noted that the policy and criteria of the past 30 years did
not vanish rapidly and would cast their influence in the early period after 1980. The
viewpoint of “literature serves politics” still potentially affected the translation and
introduction of foreign literary works (Zhang He, 2010). In 1980 an old pedant major
in foreign literature could not even tolerate the translation and publication of the
British detective novel, Death on the Nile, and the best-seller in America, Gone with
the Wind (Li Jingduan, 2005).

4.3.2 The Influence of the Language Ontology

The linguistic turn of Western Philosophy in the 20th century was marked as a
significant revolution in modern philosophy. New linguistic theories considered
language as an independent system, which has its own mode of operation and should
not be seen as a mere reflection of the world (Wang Yanhong, 2010). Modern
literature focuses more on the important role played by the form of the language.
Literature is an art of language, and its aesthetic value rests in its language instead of

41
its content (Gan, 2007). As a matter of fact, artistic language act as the carrier of the
artistic vision and runs through the whole process of creating art with aesthetic
experiences living and developing with it (ibid).
After the 1980s, domestic scholars came to realize the importance of the form of
the language as Western Literary Theory was introduced and the understanding of the
essence of the literature deepened. Owing to the Language Ontology in modern
western philosophy, the significance and the noumenon of the language were widely
recognized (Wang Yanhong, 2010).
In this instance, translators began to take the language form of the source text
seriously and had a higher pursuit in the artistry of the language. This is reflected in
the prefaces written by Cheng Shi and Xu Ruzhi. Both of the translators gave
considerable space of their prefaces to discuss the artistic features of The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, especially the artistry of its language. In his preface Cheng
(1987) spoke highly of the vernaculars used in the original, claiming them to be vivid
and expressive, and he also pointed out that Mark Twain, unlike other writers of his
time, was the first to employ a “living language” throughout the whole work.
Additionally, Cheng (1987) deemed that Mark Twain demonstrated that vernaculars
are beautiful and poetic languages, which are able in conveying all subtle ideas,
sentiments, and feelings as well as in portraying all scenes and landscapes. Xu
(1995) regarded Mark Twain’s narration through characters’ unique languages and as
a remarkable contribution to literature and spoke highly of language humor of the
original, which he reckoned would bring pleasant aesthetic enjoyment to Chinese
readers. In his preface, he went as far as to give the example of a feigned king calling
the fake Duke of Bridgewater “Bilgewater” to show the language humor of the work
(Xu, 1995). Xu paid tribute to the language of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in
the footnote of his version as well (1998). He regarded Mark Twain’s large adoption
of native vernacular languages as a unique feature of this book, which is of much help
in demonstrating local colors of different regions and racial overtones of
African-Americans as well as in molding different characters in this literary
masterpiece (Xu, 1998). Moreover, he added in the footnote that Mark Twain’s proper
42
use of local dialects in narrating and characterizing marked a major step forward in
the history of literature (ibid). In a word, both translators paid great attention to the
language of the original and gave a high appraisal to it.
Both translators in the 1980s talked about their plans on translation as well.
Cheng (1987) set up two goals for his translation, of which the first is to strive to
produce a fully colloquial text and the second is to preserve the features of
African-American Vernacular English. Xu explained in the footnote of his version of
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that a word-for-word translation of dialects is
difficult and a hard translation may cause troubles in reading which discourage
readers as well as drive the literary features of the original almost to extinction, and
hence, he decided to retain some features of Black English without harming the
literariness of the work and the readability in literary appreciation (1998, p. 2). It can
be seen that both translators regarded the reproduction of the artistry of the language
as an important task of translation. A set of translated texts from their translations is
displayed below for further explanation.
Example 1
ST: “Well, den,, dis is de way it look to me,, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat ‘uz bein’
sot free,, en one er de boys wuz to git shot,, would he say, ‘Go on en save me,
nemmine, ‘bout a doctor f’r to save dis one?’ Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer?
Would he say dat?, You BET he wouldn’t! WELL,, den, is JIM gywne to say it?
No,, sah — I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place, ‘dout a DOCTOR, not if it’s
forty year!” (Twain, 1981, p. 275)

TT1:“好吧，我的看法史（是）这样，哈克。约史（要是）放出来的史他，
哥耳（儿）们中间有一过（个）挨了一枪，难道他会说，‘快走，救出我
再说，布（不）用操醒（心）请医生救这一过！’这相史（像是）汤姆少
爷说的话吗？他会这样说吗？你科（可）以达（打）赌他布会！那拗（好）
——难道杰姆就会这样说？不，先商（生）——没有过医生，我一步也布
离开这地方；哪帕（怕）待上四十年也布离开！”(Twain, 1985/1989, p. 276)

TT2:“那好。据我看，事情就是如此的。赫克，要是这回逃出来的是他，
伙计们中间有一个吃了一抢（枪），那他会不会说， ‘为了纠（救）我，往
前走吧，别为了纠（救）其他人惹麻烦，找什么医生啊。’汤姆少爷是那
样的人么？他会这么说么？你可以打多（赌），他才不会呢！那么杰姆呢，
我会这样说么？不，先生，要是不找医生，我一布（步）也不走，即便要
等四十年也行！”(Twain, 1965/1998, p. 249)

43
 The ST is what Jim said when Huck asked him whether they should stop running
and get a doctor to treat Tom Sawyer, who got shot in the leg when they fled from the
farm. The ST is meant to describe Jim as a selfless and grateful person who willingly
takes the risk of getting caught again to trade for a doctor to save Tom. Moreover,
Mark Twain made considerable deviations in the text according to the linguistic
features of Black English to highlight the unique social identity of Jim. As is seen in
the example, both translations can convey the image of Jim as a selfless and grateful
person. Moreover, both Cheng and Xu used malapropism to imitate deviations in the
original as an attempt to achieve foregrounding that can make the social identity of
Jim stand out. Both translators paid enough attention to the rhetorical features of
Black English in the original and spent efforts in reproducing it by using homophones
such as “布(不)” and “帕(怕)”, and using characters with similar sounds such as “纠(救)”
and “抢(枪)”. This means that the language here is more than a tool to depict characters
and is respected as well as treated as an independent entity by both translators.
Furthermore, this thesis has another noteworthy finding, that is, Zhang Wanli
(1984) spent the last paragraph of his new preface on a brief discussion on Mark
Twain’s superb employment of different American local dialects in the novel and
exclaimed over Mark Twain’s true mastery of language when his version of The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published again in 1984. This further indicates
the influence of language ontology on translators.

4.3.3 The Influence of the Expectation of Readers

When comparing the two versions published after 1980, it is not hard to find that
Cheng and Xu have a different frequency in the use of malapropism. This can be
demonstrated through the two examples listed below.
Example 1
ST: “Doan’, hurt me — don’,t! I hain’,t ever done no harm to a ghos’,. I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for ,‘em. You go en git in de river agin,
whah you b’,longs, en doan’, do nuffn to Ole Jim, ‘at ‘uz alwuz yo’, fren’.”
(Twain, 1981, p. 41)

44
 TT1: “别省(伤)我——别！我冲乃(从来)布(不)曾难为过一个鬼。自(死)人
我冲乃喜欢，尽力帮他们的忙。你回河里去吧，河史(是)你的家。别省我
老杰姆，他冲乃都是你的奔(朋)友。” (Twain, 1985/1989, p. 46)

TT2: “别害我，别害我！我从尾(未)伤害过一个鬼魂。我一相(向)喜欢死人，
尽力为他们做毫(好)事。你回到河里去吧，那是你的地方，可碧(别)伤害
老杰姆，他可丛(从)来都是你的好朋友。” (Twain, 1965/1998, p. 39)

Example 2
ST: “Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’, for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’,
Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’,t ever ben free ef it hadn’, ben for Huck;
Huck done it. Jim won’,t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’, fren’, Jim’s ever
had; en you’s de ONLY fren’, ole Jim’s got now.” (Twain, 1981, pp. 88-89)

TT1: “布(不)用陀旧(多久)，我就会快活得叫起来，我约(要)说：这陀跪(多
亏)哈克。我史过(是个)自由人啦，要布史有哈克，我这一攀(辈)子也布用
想自由；哈克帮了我的忙，杰姆我永世忘布了你哈克；你史我杰姆顶好的
奔(朋)友；我劳(老)杰姆此刻只有你这过奔友。” (Twain, 1985/1989, p. 94)

TT2: “马上，我就要欢呼啦。我要说，这一切，都得归功赫克。我是个自
由人啦。可要不是赫克，我哪里会自由呢。全是赫克干成功的。杰姆永生
永世忘不掉你，赫克。你是我最好的朋友，你也是我杰姆唯一的一个朋
友。” (Twain,1965/1998 , p.82)

As is shown in Example 1, Cheng’s translation (TT1) has nine instances of the

employment of malapropism, while for Xu’s version, the number is five. In Example
2, Xu (TT2) completely denied the use of malapropism. These cases demonstrate that
Xu did not always apply the malapropism method when tackling African-American
Vernacular English, even when he did, he did not use it as frequently as Cheng. This
originates from the expectation of readers.
In most cases, translators cannot exert their free wills while translating as they
have to take account of their readers for the sake of the acceptance of their
translations. This is the reason why translators always translate in ways that are
favored by readers.
According to an investigation on readers’ attitude towards different translated
African-American Vernacular English texts, texts which are translated by the
malapropism method are not very popular among readers, with only 9 respondents out

45
of 50 regarding the translation as a good one (Wen Jun, Tan Fang, &Wang Yan,
2005). The outcome of this research shows that the acceptance of the malapropism
method among the readers is poor.
Cheng Shi’s version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in
1989, and his use of malapropism in translating the African-American Vernacular
English discourses in the original is considered as an audacious attempt in
reproducing the features of the language in the source text (Wang Yanhong, 2008,
2010). However, Cheng’s use of malapropism in his translation of Black English has
suffered considerable questioning and criticism. For example, Wang Yanhong (2008,
2010) stated that corrections in parentheses following wrongly written words make
the translation reads broken and unsmooth, but without corrections, the translated text
is quite confusing. In addition, Cheng was very arbitrary in choosing the wrong words
to replace the correct ones, which can be demonstrated by a set of translated pieces
extracted from his translation (Wang Yanhong, 2008, 2010; Li Xinchao & Zhang Lin,
2008). Moreover, Wang Yanhong (2010) feared that Cheng’s overwhelming use of
malapropism may make readers feel tiring and boring and in turn lose the motivation
to continue reading.
It seems strange why Cheng applied the malapropism method so frequently and
produced a translation that is not very favored by the readers. This is actually because
Cheng is the first translator that used the malapropism method to translate
African-American Vernacular English in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in
China, which means he had no predecessors to refer to and thus had no idea that the
malapropism method is not welcomed by the readers in translating Black English. In
short, objectively he did not have any way to learn about the acceptance of the
malapropism method among readers.
However, the situation is different for Xu Ruzhi as his version was published in
1998, nearly ten years after the publication of Cheng’s version. He can refer to the
acceptance of Cheng’s version and the criticism on it to amend his translation strategy
and method. In Xu’s 1998 version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he
mentioned in the footnote that previous versions either completely gave up recreating
46
the features of local dialects or solely retain some features of Black English, and thus
he made the decision that his version would adopt the latter approach and be more
flexible in translation in order to present the image of Jim, the major black slave in the
book, without harming the literariness of the work and the readability in literary
appreciation. These words in Xu’s footnote reflect that he indeed referred to Cheng’s
version and made certain adjustments in his own translation based on his analysis of
Cheng’s version. As a result, Xu applied the malapropism method more moderately
than Cheng and this moderateness made his translation more fluent and readable than
Cheng’s version, and his substitutions of wrong words for right ones were more
understandable and less ambiguous (Wang Yanhong, 2008). This can be seen as his
compromise for the readers.
To sum up, the expectation of readers can influence the translation of
African-American Vernacular English as a factor of the cultural context. This can be
reflected by Xu’s temperance in applying malapropism when compared to Cheng,
which is a compromise for the readers. The reason why Cheng failed to notice the
readers’ expectation is that he did not have the means to learn about the acceptance of
the malapropism method among the readers as he was the first translator who tried
malapropism when translating Black English.
Despite the difference in the frequency of the employment of malapropism, the
two versions published in the new era still share a common feature, that is, both of
their translators laid great emphasis on the norms of the source text and paid attention
to the reproduction of the rhetorical features of the Black English discourses in The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

4.4 Summary
This chapter is distributed to the synchronic research on two versions published
after 1980. The investigation finds out that both Cheng Shi and Xu Ruzhi employed
malapropism in treating Black English discourses in The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. However, Xu showed more temperance in the use of the malapropism method
when compared with Cheng and translated the rest part of the African-American

47
Vernacular English in the book into standard Chinese colloquial.
Related ideological and poetical factors are then examined to provide an
explanation of the similarity as well as the difference in the translation strategies and
methods of both translators. Both Cheng and Xu applied the malapropism method in
translation might result from the tolerant environment for literary creation which was
brought about by the new policy of “letting a hundred flowers blossom, a hundred
schools of thought contend”. The weakened influence of the politics on the literature
can offer both translators more freedom in manipulating literary discourses, and the
flourishing introduction of western literature spared their efforts in debating for the
legitimacy of their translations. Moreover, the language ontology was imported from
Western Literary Theory and was adopted by domestic literature workers, and thus
the significance and the noumenon of the language were widely recognized. This can
be demonstrated by the fact that both Cheng and Xu talked a lot about the artistry of
the language of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in their prefaces as well as paid
attention to the rhetorical features of the language when translating. However, a
relatively free environment for literary creation and a new understanding of the
language does not mean that translators can translate at will. They still have to take
the expectation of readers into account as the malapropism method is not welcomed
among the readers.

48
Chapter Five A Diachronic Study of Four Selected Versions
This chapter is a diachronic study of all four selected versions. The first section
analyzes and compares the translation strategies and methods adopted by translators
from two different time periods. Two tendencies in the selection of translation
strategies and methods among the four translators are discussed. The emergence and
the existence of both tendencies are explained in the following section by
investigating relevant socio-cultural factors.

5.1 Comparison and Analysis of Diachronous Translators’

Translation Strategies and Methods

5.1.1 An Ever-present Tendency of Standardization

As is discussed in the second chapter, both Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong
translated all African-American Vernacular English speeches in The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn into standard Chinese colloquial language. The deviations between
Black English and Standard English that has been deliberately made by Mark Twain
in the original to accomplish foregrounding were abandoned by both translators and
no sign of recreation or imitation of such deviations can be found in their versions.
And hence, the contributions, which would have been made by the foregrounding
achieved by those deviations, to characterizations of black slaves, especially Lady
Watson’s Old Jim, is lost.
Two versions published in the 1950s demonstrated that both Zhang Wanli and
Zhang Yousong chose to conform to the norms of the target language and produced
what would be called acceptable translations by Gideon Toury. Both translators in the
1950s standardized the non-standard Black English in the original in the process of
translation.
This tendency of standardization while processing African-American Vernacular
English discourses in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn showed up as well in the
time after 1980. Xu Ruzhi translated a part of the Black English speeches in the
original into standard Chinese oral language in his version. Xu showed a wavering

49
attitude when making a choice between the norms of the source text and those of the
target language, which means that a portion of his translation of African-American
Vernacular English was carried out under the instructions of the target language’s
norms and was standardized.
To sum up, a tendency to standardize when translating African-American
Vernacular English existed in the 1950s as well as in the time after 1980. This
tendency survived throughout time.

5.1.2 A Tendency of Foreignization After 1980

Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong resorted to the standard Chinese colloquial
language method to tackle the Black English in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Both of them followed the norms of the target language and the unique features of
African-American Vernacular English in the original were eliminated in their versions.
They had a tendency of standardization when it comes to the translation of Black
English.
After 1980, a new tendency in translating African-American Vernacular English
came into being, that is, a tendency of foreignization. Cheng Shi applied the
malapropism method in a radical way to translate the Black English discourses in The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In his version, the black slaves’ words were
processed in a special way by deliberately replacing the right words or characters with
wrongly written ones in order to achieve foregrounding. Attempts were made in his
translation to simulate the deviations between African-American Vernacular English
and Standard English in the original. This shows that Cheng was oriented to the
norms of the source text, and he was trying to move the readers towards the author,
which is Schleiermacher’s preferred translation strategy and is later taken up by
Venuti as foreignization (Munday, 2012).
Xu Ruzhi interpreted the Black English speeches in The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn partly with the standard Chinese colloquial language method and
partly with the malapropism method. He paid attention to the norms of the source text
and complied with it in a part of his translation, but he made compromises to the

50
norms of the target language as well, which can be demonstrated through his
relatively low frequency in the employment of malapropism when compared with
Cheng Shi. Anyway, a tendency of foreignization also existed in his translation of
African- American vernacular English.
In short, a new tendency of foreignization was found in the two versions of The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published after 1980. Both Cheng Shi and Xu Ruzhi
did attach importance to the features of Black English and tried to reproduce these
unique properties so as to preserve the aesthetic values of this language in their
translation.

5.2 Changes in the Socio-cultural Context

5.2.1 The Weakening of the Political Influence over the Literary

System
In the 1950s, the literary concept of socialist realism was introduced to China as
a guiding theory for literature and art production. Having political implications in its
nature, socialist realism, enhanced by the criteria of “political criterion first, artistic
criterion second”, became the core of the power for the political ideology to regulate
literature and art as it went with the tide of building proletarian literature (Zha, 2004).
Under these circumstances, the viewpoint that the literature should serve politics was
the mainstream in the Chinese literary circle.
As the political ideology and poetics exerting their powerful influence on the
literary system, the translation and introduction of foreign literary works were brought
to serve political needs and thus suffered from strict regulation. According to Li
Jingduan (1988), two-thirds of the translated literary works came from Russian
literature in the 1950s and from 1950 to 1980 literature introduced from America,
Britain, France, and Japan only took up around 18 percent among the foreign literary
works translated into Chinese. Besides, these literary works from the capitalist society
did not earn their right to be translated out of nothing because their translators had to
strive to prove that they have progressive meanings against feudalism and capitalism
or at least describe the corruption and atrocity of capitalism. As a result of these
51
defenses of the legality of translations, translators at that time focused mainly on the
ideological cores of literary works while paying little attention to the artistry. Both
Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong discussed a lot about the advanced ideals of The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as its revelation of the darkness and
heinousness of American society in their prefaces while talked very little about the
artistry of the work, especially that of different local dialects which were used in the
book.
This situation changed after the beginning of the Reform and Open-up as the
central government established a new policy of “letting a hundred flowers blossom, a
hundred schools of thought contend” to boost domestic art development and scientific
progress. This new policy reduced constraints on literary and artistic creation,
meanwhile, the Open-up promoted cultural exchanges between China and the outside
world. The defensive and repellent attitude towards western literature which existed in
the literary circle in the 1950s was abandoned (Tu, 2014).
In this case, many translators showed great passion in literature translation and
introduction in order to end the isolation of the Chinese literary circle from modern
western literature, and hence there was a dramatic change in the translation and
publication of foreign literature from 1980 to 1987 when comparing to that from 1950
to 1979 as the proportion of translated Russian literary plunged to 6.3 percent while
the percentage of translated literature from America, Britain, France, and Japan
increased sharply to 58.9 percent (Li Jingduan, 1988). In addition, genres of translated
literary works after 1980 were richer than those before.
This tolerant environment for literary and art production allowed translators to
extricate themselves from tiresome debates over the legitimacy of their translations
and at the same time they could have more freedom in trying new strategies and
methods as well as have spared effort to attend to the reproduction of the artistry of
literary works. Unlike their predecessors, both Cheng Shi and Xu Ruzhi spent
considerable space in their prefaces to discuss the unique features of the language of
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which would have been a luxury for Zhang
Wanli and Zhang Yousong. This tolerance of the environment can be reflected
52
through their translations as well. An example is given below.
Example 1
ST: “What do dey stan’ for? I’se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out
wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’
broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de
raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears come,
en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you
wuz thinkin’ ‘bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat
truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey
fren’s en makes ‘em ashamed.” (Twain, 1981, p. 85)

TT1:“它们指的是些什么吗？我来告诉你吧。我因为拚命地划木筏，又使
劲地喊你，累得我简直快要死了。后来我睡着了的时候，我的心差不多已
经碎了，因为把你丢掉了，我真是伤心透了，我就不再管我的木筏会遇到
什么危险了。等我醒过来的时候，看见你又回来了，平平安安地回来了，
我的眼泪都流出来了。我心里有说不出来的感激，我恨不得跪下去用嘴亲
亲你的脚。可是你却想方设法，编出一套瞎话来骗我老吉木。那边那一堆
是些肮脏的东西；肮脏的东西就是那些往朋友脑袋上抹屎、让人家觉得难
为情的人。”(Twain, 1899/1984, p. 106)

TT2:“这些东西指的是什么？我来告诉你吧。我因为拼命地划木排，又大
声喊你，简直快累死了，后来我困得打瞌睡的时候，我因为你不见了，真
是伤心透顶，我就连我自己和木排要出什么岔子都懒得管它，就那么睡了。
后来我一醒过来，瞧见你平平安安，全须全尾地回来了，我就掉下眼泪来，
简直恨不得跪下来亲你的脚，因为我简直谢天谢地，高兴透了。可是你就
光想着怎么扯个谎来拿老吉姆开玩笑。这些乱七八糟的东西都是废物；废
物就是那些往朋友头上抹屎、叫他们丢脸的人。”(Twain, 1885/2005, pp.
103-104)

TT3:“它们代表什摸（么）？我来讲给你听。我一边照管木坯（排），一
边叫你，乏得布（不）行，我睡着了，当时我的醒（心）都碎啦，云（因）
为你走散（失）啦。我自己，还有这木坯，会布会出事，我都布圆益（不
愿意）去想啦。我醒来一看，你并并（平平）安安回来啦，布由得直荡
（淌）眼泪，我满醒感谢，恨布得跪下来亲亲你的脚。可你，你想的史
（是）怎样撒谎，作弄我劳（老）杰姆。那些东西史（是）垃圾，那种往
奔（朋）友脑袋上泼脏水，叫他们丢人现眼的，也史垃圾。” (Twain,
1985/1989, pp. 90-91)

TT4:“这些个事情指的是什么嘛？我要对你说的。我使劲划，使劲喊你，
累得没得命了。睡的时候，因为丢失了你，我心都率（碎）了，对自己，
对木筏子，我也不放在心上了。一醒来，发现你可回来了，一切平安无事，
我禁不住流出了眼泪，为了谢天谢地，我恨不得双膝跪下，吻你的脚。可
是啊，你心里想的只是怎样编一个荒（谎）来糊弄老杰姆。那边一堆残枝

53
 败叶是肮脏的东西。肮脏的东西也就是人家把脏东西往朋友的脑袋上道
（倒），叫人家为他害少（臊）的人嘛。”(Twain,1965/1998 , p. 78)

This part of the source text is what Jim said when he found out that Huck played
a joke on him when they reunited after getting separated in the fog. The text is meant
to depict an image of a black slave, Jim, who is loyal, honest, frank, and kind. He is
very worried about his lost friend, Huck, while at the same time Huck, a white boy, is
trying to josh him and make him embarrassed. This plot can indicate the absurdity of
White Supremacy as the black people can be kind and honest while the white people
are not always pure and upright. All the four translated discourses extracted from the
four versions can convey that image. However, Zhang Wanli’s translation (TT1) and
Zhang Yousong’s translation (TT2) failed to highlight the social identity of Jim, as his
Black English speeches are translated into standard Chinese colloquial language,
which reads no difference from the words of the white people in the versions of
Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong. On the other hand, Cheng’s translation (TT3) and
Xu’s translation (TT4) can transfer the same image while demonstrating the
differences between Jim’s words and white people’s words. Both of them made
attempts at simulating some of the deviations in the original through the use of
homophones such as “ 道(倒)” and characters with similar pronunciations such as “ 少
(臊)”. Although the deviations in the translation are not exactly the same as those in

the original, similar foregrounding is achieved as the words of the black people in the
translation versions are obviously different from those of the white people, thus
underlining the unique identity of Jim. To put it differently, Zhang Wanli and Zhang
Yousong focused more on the communication of the ideological contents of the
original under the impact of the socio-cultural context of the 1950s and hence tend to
standardize the African-American Vernacular English; whereas Cheng Shi and Xu
Ruzhi are extricated from a mere emphasis on the transferring of political ideas
because of a relatively loose environment for literary and artistic creation in the 1980s
and thus they have a tendency of foreignization and chose to imitate and retain the
unique features of Black English as they can have more freedom in literary creation.
However, the ideological elements still had their power at the start of the 1980s.
54
Although the literary work to be translated was no longer judged by the ruling classes
of its original nation, a new standard of the selection of the work to be translated was
established to limit the influence of modern western literature so as to protect the
leading position of realism literature (Zhang He, 2010). And the publication of
western literature was met with resistance from some of the conservative scholars
inside the literary circle (Li Jingduan, 2005). This might be the reason why both
Cheng and Xu still had to discuss the ideological core of The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn in their prefaces.

5.2.2 A Shift in the View of Language

In the 1950s, the language was taken as a tool to express ideas and to convey
information, which resulted from three aspects.
Firstly, this view regarding language as a tool has its philosophical basis in
Chinese history. It has a historical origin as in the ancient time Chinese intellectuals
considered that language is subordinate to thoughts and is merely a medium to
transmit them (Gao, 2001). Their opinion lived through history and was accepted and
followed by leading intellectuals who initiated the cultural change in modern China
(ibid).
Secondly, this view of language accord with the prevailing ideas in China after
1950. Since the foundation of the PRC, Marxism had become the guiding philosophy
in China, but there were some Soviet characteristics embedded in it (ibid). Both Lenin
and Stalin deemed language as a tool, and their view of language, embodied in this
Marxism tinged with Soviet features, influenced the way in which the Chinese people
think of language. Besides, the viewpoint of “literature serving politics” was widely
supported in the Chinese literary circle, which led to the fact that the ideological
content of literary works was stressed while little attention was paid to the aesthetic
values of the language itself.
Thirdly, the thought of taking language as a tool met the needs of historical
events at that time. In the 1950s, the central government demanded a
proletarianization in Chinese literature, which required the language of literary works

55
to be simple and easy to understand (Wang Yanhong, 2010). This proletarian
literature focused on conveying ideas to the public and in this case language was
taken for granted as a tool.
Because of the prevalence of the idea that regards language as a tool, it’s not a
surprise that Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong chose to forgo the artistry of the
language in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn while concentrating on
communicating the ideological significance of the work.
A great change took place in the understanding of the essence of language after
1980, that is, domestic scholars became aware of the importance of the form of the
language and the significance as well as the noumenon of language was widely
recognized across the Chinese literary circle. This had to do with scholars’ better
grasp of the essence of the literature and, most importantly, the introduction of the
Language Ontology from modern western literary theory.
There was a linguistic turn in Western Philosophy in the 20th century. New-born
linguistic theories proposed that language should be seen as an independent system
that operates in its own way and should not be downgraded simply to a reflection of
the world (ibid). As a result, language ontology came into existence and modern
literature acted correspondingly in that it laid emphasis on the form of the language.
In this case, literature was interpreted as an art of language with all of its aesthetic
values resting in its language but not in its content (Gan, 2007). Language in artistic
creation finally shook off its previous image as a tool, and instead became the carrier
of the artistic vision and the host of aesthetic experiences (ibid).
This language ontology was introduced as a part of western literary theories after
1980 as the cultural communications between China and foreign countries became
active again because of the Reform and Open-up. Influenced by language ontology,
translators started to notice the significance of the form of the language in source texts
and set up a higher goal in the artistry of their translations. This is shown clearly in
the prefaces of both Cheng (1987) and Xu (1995) as they discussed a lot about the
aesthetic effects achieved through the employment of different local dialects in The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and they praised Mark Twain for his mastery in the
56
use of vernaculars. Furthermore, they all talked about how they would translate the
local dialects in the book (Cheng, 1987; Xu, 1998). However, this is not the case for
the preface of Zhang Wanli and that of Zhang Yousong. Neither of them left any word
in their prefaces either on the aesthetic values of the local dialects in The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn or on their plans on the translation of native languages in the
work. They only addressed the significance of the progressive meanings of the book’s
ideological content (Zhang Wanli, 1954; Zhang Yousong, n.d.). Yet Zhang Wanli
wrote another preface for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when his version got
published again in 1984. In this new preface, Zhang Wanli (1984) gave a brief
discussion in the last paragraph on Mark Twain’s excellent and proficient
employment of different local dialects. This further demonstrates that the introduction
of language ontology exerted influence on the translators’ view of language.
The influence of language ontology can be reflected not only through the
prefaces of the four selected translators, but through their translations as well. A set of
translated discourses, corresponding to the same source text, are extracted from four
versions respectively and displayed below for discussion.
Example 1
ST: “Well, den,, dis is de way it look to me,, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat ‘uz
bein’, sot free,, en one er de boys wuz to git, shot, would he say, ‘Go on en
save me, nemmine ,‘bout a doctor f’,r to save dis one?’ Is dat like Mars Tom
Sawyer? Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn’t! WELL, den,, is JIM
gywne to say it? No, sah — I doan’, budge a step out’,n dis place ,‘dout a
DOCTOR, not if it’s forty year!” (Twain, 1981, p. 275)

TT1:“哼，我看是这么回事，哈克：咱们倒过来看一看，假如放出来的那
个人是他，咱们哥们儿有一个挨了枪的话，他会不会说：‘往前走吧，救
人就救到底吧，用不着去请大夫来救这个家伙啊’？汤姆·莎耶少爷是那
种人吗？他会说那种话吗？你放心吧，他不会的！那么，好了，我吉木能
说那种话吗？甭打算，先生——大夫一时不来，我绝不离开这儿一步；哪
怕等上四十年我都不在乎！”(Twain, 1899/1984, p. 346)

TT2:“嗯，照我看是这样的，哈克。要是逃出来的是他，伙计们有一个挨
了枪。他会不会说：‘快跑，就我的命要紧，用不着找大夫来给这家伙治
伤’？汤姆·索亚少爷是这种人吗？他会说这种话吗？管保不会！那么，
我吉姆能说这种话吗？不会，您哪——要不找个大夫来看看，我连一步也
不肯离开这儿；哪怕要等几十年也不要紧！”(Twain, 1885/2005, p. 343)
57
 TT3:“好吧，我的看法史（是）这样，哈克。约史（要是）放出来的史他，
哥耳（儿）们中间有一过（个）挨了一枪，难道他会说，‘快走，救出我
再说，布（不）用操醒（心）请医生救这一过！’这相史（像是）汤姆少
爷说的话吗？他会这样说吗？你科（可）以达（打）赌他布会！那拗（好）
——难道杰姆就会这样说？不，先商（生）——没有过医生，我一步也布
离开这地方；哪帕（怕）待上四十年也布离开！”(Twain, 1985/1989, p. 276)

TT4:“那好。据我看，事情就是如此的。赫克，要是这回逃出来的是他，
伙计们中间有一个吃了一抢（枪），那他命不会说， ‘为了纠（救）我，往
前走吧，别为了纠（救）其他人惹麻烦，找什么医生啊。’汤姆少爷是那
样的人么？他会这么说么？你可以打多（赌），他才不会呢！那么杰姆呢，
我会这样说么？不，先生，要是不找医生，我一布（步）也不走，即便要
等四十年也行！”(Twain, 1965/1998, p. 249)

This part of the source text is what Jim said when Huck asked him whether they
should stop to get a doctor to treat Tom Sawyer’s wounded leg after they fled from
the farm. It portrayed a black slave, Jim, who is grateful and selfless and willing to
take the risk of being seized again just to call for a doctor to treat Tom Sawyer’s
wound. All of the four target texts can transfer such an image of Jim. However, Zhang
Wanli’s translation (TT1) and Zhang Yousong’s translation (TT2) cannot highlight
the social identity of Jim as his unique sociolect is standardized and transformed into
standard Chinese oral language that shows no difference from the white people in the
Zhang Wanli’s and Zhang Yousong’s versions. Meanwhile, Cheng’s translation (TT3)
and Xu’s Translation (TT4) can not only convey such a selfless and grateful figure,
but also retain the peculiarity of Black English in the translation through mimicking
some of the deviations in the original. Both Cheng and Xu used homophones,
characters with similar pronunciations, and characters with similar morphologies to
achieve foregrounding and make the translated African-American Vernacular English
different from the words of the white people, making the social identity of Jim stand
out. In other words, Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong treated language as a tool for
depicting certain characters and communicating ideas while Cheng and Xu further
paid attention to the artistry of the language itself. This difference in the treatment of
language is in some way possibly related to the change in the view of language.

58
5.2.3 The Translator’s Adaptation to the Expectations of Readers
As is discussed in the first section of this chapter, the tendency to standardization
also presents after 1980. This can be attributed to the expectation of readers, which is
an important factor of the cultural context.
Translators have to take readers’ expectations into account while translating so
as to ensure a good acceptance of their translations within the target culture. The
translation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was no exception.
Cheng Shi translated The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and his version got
published in 1989. Cheng made a bold attempt in recreating the features of
African-American Vernacular English through the malapropism method (Wang
Yanhong, 2008, 2010). Nevertheless, his excessively frequent application of
malapropism invited many doubts and criticisms. Wang Yanhong (2008, 2010)
pointed out three major defects of Cheng’s translation of Black English: firstly,
sentences which should be smooth and easy were broken into pieces because of
glosses following wrongly written words; secondly, Cheng’s use of homophones in
replacements of right words may lead to readers’ misinterpretations as Chinese is a
logographic language; thirdly, Cheng’s substitution of wrong words for right ones
were haphazard, lacking a certain pattern. This arbitrariness in replacements of words
was also questioned by other scholars.
Apart from researchers and scholars, readers do not welcome the use of
malapropism in the translation of African-American Vernacular English as well. A
study on readers’ opinions of differently translated Black English texts demonstrated
that the malapropism method was not an advisable way to translate African-American
Vernacular English in readers’ point of view as merely 9 out of 66 respondents
regarded the text translated by malapropism as a good translation (Wen Jun, et al.,
2005).
Cheng failed to learn about all this because he is the first to employ malapropism
in translating Black English with no predecessors to refer to. However, the situation is
different for Xu as his version is published nearly ten years later than Cheng’s. All

59
these facts mentioned above might be the reason why Xu was more temperate and
cautious than Cheng while applying the malapropism method. In the translation
annotation attached to the footnote of his version of The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn, Xu (1998) discussed previous versions of this literary work and put forward his
own idea about the translation of the local dialects that appeared in the book, that is,
he decided to preserve some of the features of Black English but his priority was to
make sure that the literariness of the work was preserved and the translated text
should be readable. As a result, he processed some of the African-American
Vernacular English discourses with malapropism while turned the rest into standard
Chinese oral language. Two comparative examples are given below to give a clearer
demonstration.
Example 1
ST: “Doan’ hurt me — don’t! I hain’t ever done no harm to a ghos’. I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for ‘em. You go en git in de river agin,
whah you b’longs, en doan’ do nuffn to Ole Jim, ‘at ‘uz alwuz yo’ fren’.”
(Twain, 1981, p. 41)

TT1: “别省(伤)我——别！我冲乃(从来)布(不)曾难为过一个鬼。自(死)人
我冲乃喜欢，尽力帮他们的忙。你回河里去吧，河史(是)你的家。别省我
老杰姆，他冲乃都是你的奔(朋)友。” (Twain, 1985/1989, p. 46)

TT2: “别害我，别害我！我从尾(未)伤害过一个鬼魂。我一相(向)喜欢死人，
尽力为他们做毫(好)事。你回到河里去吧，那是你的地方，可碧(别)伤害
老杰姆，他可丛(从)来都是你的好朋友。” (Twain, 1965/1998, p. 39)

Example 2
ST: “Pooty soon I’ll be a-shout’n’ for joy, en I’ll say, it’s all on accounts o’
Huck; I’s a free man, en I couldn’t ever ben free ef it hadn’ ben for Huck;
Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forgit you, Huck; you’s de bes’ fren’ Jim’s ever
had; en you’s de ONLY fren’ ole Jim’s got now.” (Twain, 1981, pp. 88-89)

TT1: “布(不)用陀旧(多久)，我就会快活得叫起来，我约(要)说：这陀跪(多
亏)哈克。我史过(是个)自由人啦，要布史有哈克，我这一攀(辈)子也布用
想自由；哈克帮了我的忙，杰姆我永世忘布了你哈克；你史我杰姆顶好的
奔(朋)友；我劳(老)杰姆此刻只有你这过奔友。” (Twain, 1985/1989, p. 94)

TT2: “马上，我就要欢呼啦。我要说，这一切，都得归功赫克。我是个自
由人啦。可要不是赫克，我哪里会自由呢。全是赫克干成功的。杰姆永生
60
 永世忘不掉你，赫克。你是我最好的朋友，你也是我杰姆唯一的一个朋
友。” (Twain,1965/1998 , p.82)

As is demonstrated in Example 1, Cheng used malapropism nine times in his

translation (TT1) while there are only five instances of the application of the
malapropism method in Xu’s version (TT2). In Example 2, malapropism is absent in
Xu’s translation (TT2). These examples show that Xu did not always resort to
malapropism when translating African-American Vernacular English, even when he
did, he did not use it as frequently as Cheng. Xu’s moderateness in the use of the
malapropism method yields better fluency and better readability for his translation
when comparing with that of Cheng. As is mentioned in his annotation, he did this to
protect the literariness and the readability, which is a compromise for the readers.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the tendency to standardization is weakened
after 1980 when compared with the situation in the 1950s as both Cheng and Xu paid
great attention to the norms of the source text while translating. In other words, the
tendency to standardization still gives way to the tendency to foreignization. This has
something to do with the expectation of readers as well. According to the opinion
survey carried out by Wen Jun, et al. (2005), the standardization of Black English
presenting in literary works hardly met the requirements of readers as the data showed
that 42 out of 66 respondents deemed that the translation of African-American
Vernacular English should differ from that of Standard English. Additionally, 39
respondents considered that the text translated with standard Chinese colloquial
language method was not good (Wen Jun, et al., 2005). This is notable because it
shows that readers expect that the unique features of Black English can be reproduced
in the translation. In other words, readers are in favor of foreignization, and they are
just not content with the malapropism method.

5.3 Summary
This chapter conducts a diachronic study on the four selected versions of The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The research finds that in the 1950s the tendency in
the translation of African-American Vernacular English was to standardize the

61
language while a new tendency of foreignization came into existence after 1980.
However, the tendency of standardization also showed up after 1980.
An investigation on the change of ideological and poetical factors follows to
discuss the reasonable motivations of the occurrence of the tendency of foreignization
and possible reasons for the emergence and preservation of the tendency of
standardization. The appearance of the tendency of standardization will be addressed
first. In the 1950s, literature was supposed to serve political needs, and literary works
were mainly meant for the advocation of the dominant ideology. As a result, literature
workers at that time mostly focused on delivering the ideological content of literary
works instead of reproducing the artistry of the work. Besides, the prevailing
interpretation of the language was to view it as a tool, and thus the aesthetic values of
the language were understated. In Addition, literary speeches in the 1950s suffered
from rigorous restrictions. Under these circumstances, both Zhang Wanli and Zhang
Yousong standardized the Black English discourses in The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. However, the powerful influence of politics on the literature gradually receded
after 1980 and the translators and writers had more freedom in processing the
language. Furthermore, the introduction and adoption of the language ontology
elevated the state of the language and encouraged literature workers to have a higher
pursuit for the artistry of literary discourses. This may explain the tendency of
foreignization which came into being after 1980 as the translators then realized the
artistry of the language itself and had the aspiration as well as the freedom to
reproduce the aesthetic values of the language. However, the tendency of
standardization still showed up after 1980. This can be attributed to the translator’s
catering to the readers as the acceptance of malapropism among the readers is poor.
Nevertheless, the tendency to standardization is weakened after 1980 still because of
the readers’ expectation because readers consider that the unique features of
African-American Vernacular English should be retained in the translation but not
through the malapropism method.

62
 Conclusion
The thesis carries out a descriptive translation study on four selected versions of
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from both synchronic and diachronic
perspectives to investigate the influence of socio-cultural context on the translation of
African-American Vernacular English. The synchronic study mainly aims to find the
similarity of contemporary versions so as to generalize the main features of the
translation of Black English in different times, and study the influence of the
socio-cultural context on the translation. The diachronic research mainly targets at
comparing the differences in the translation tendency of different times and study the
connection between the changes in the tendency and the changes in the social-cultural
context. The thesis applies Toury’s continuum of adequate and acceptable translation
to identify the features of the translation and the tendency of the translator, and
employs Lefevere’s rewriting theory to provide the main perspective for the
investigation of socio-cultural context, which means the paper mainly looks into the
ideological and poetical factors of different times.
The research finds that the translation of Black English in The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn is indeed subjected to the impact of the socio-cultural context of
different times.
In the 1950s, literature was made to serve politics due to powerful ideological
impression and political poetics’ constrictive demands, and hence, the artistry of
literary works was considered inferior to the delivery of political ideas which were
concordant to the dominant ideology. As a result, literary translation at that time was
mostly dedicated to transferring ideas that conform to the dominant domestic ideology
from the source text, while the reproduction of aesthetic values was of secondary
consideration. Furthermore, writers and translators in the 1950s mainly took language
as a tool, which led to the artistry of the language itself being overlooked. Besides, the
strict regulation which was exerted by the government on the speech of literary works
left little space for writers and translators to manipulate literary language.
Consequently, both Zhang Wanli and Zhang Yousong, two translators who translated

63
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the 1950s, tended to standardize the
African-American Vernacular English discourses in the original and transformed all
of them into fluent standard Chinese colloquial. Beyond that, the prefaces of both
translators were more like statements of defense to justify their translation selection as
both forewords were mainly discussions about the ideas of opposing Negro slavery
system and denouncing White supremacy as well as the content which describes the
dark side of capitalism in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Since 1980, the manipulation of ideology was weakened to create flourishing
literature and art, and thus writers and translators had more freedom in literary
creation and translation. In addition, domestic scholars gradually adopted the idea of
language ontology as the academic exchange with foreign countries intensified, and in
turn, they began to pay considerable attention to the artistry of the language itself.
Under these circumstances, both Cheng Shi and Xu Ruzhi spent considerable space in
their prefaces to discuss the artistry of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the
unique features of the dialects in it, and resorted to the malapropism method when
tackling the Black English speeches in an attempt to preserve foreign elements and to
recreate rhetorical features of the language in the original. A tendency of
foreignization appeared.
However, Xu showed more temperance than Cheng when employing
malapropism than Cheng, applying the standard colloquial language method to
translate part of the African-American Vernacular English discourses in the original at
the same time. In other words, the tendency of standardization existed in the new age
as well. This phenomenon can be attributed to the expectation of readers. A
questionnaire survey carried out by Wen Jun, Tan Fang, and Wang Yan (2005)
showed that the malapropism method is not a welcomed approach in tackling
African-American Vernacular English among the readers. Cheng failed to know this
as he is the first to employ malapropism without any predecessor to refer to, but Xu
can learn from the acceptance of Cheng’s version as well as the criticism on it
because his version came out nearly ten years later than Cheng’s. Moreover, the
weakened ideological influence may also contribute to the survival of the tendency of
64
standardization as the policy and criteria in the 1950s still had a potential impact on
the translation and introduction of foreign literature after 1980 according to Zhang He
(2010). Nevertheless, the tendency of standardization in the new era is weakened
when comparing with the situation of the 1950s, and it gives way to the tendency of
foreignization due to the changes in the ideological and poetical factors.
This thesis takes four translations of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and
conducts research both synchronically and diachronically in order to study the
connection between the translation of African-American Vernacular English and the
impact of socio-cultural context. However, there are other Black English literary
works or works concerning African-American Vernacular English that are not
covered in the research, such as Gone with the Wind, Beloved, The Color Purple,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and so on. Some of the translations of the literary works
mentioned above contain other translation methods, for example, Zhang Guruo’s
version of Gone with the Wind used the dialect-for-dialect method. This thesis only
deals with the translation of the Black English in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
which means that its research still needs to be amplified and extended in the future.

65
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