This paper aims at suggesting a comparative overview of two translation strategies appeared in two Chinese editions of The Moon and Sixpence.

W. Somerset Maugham, a most popular British playwright, novelist and short story writer, was endowed with great writing ability. One of his well-received masterpiece, The Moon and Sixpence, in part based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin, explores into the mind and soul of the protagonist Charles Strickland who abandoned his family to be an artist in his middle age. This book is often mentioned by so-called "bookworms" as well as being abandoned. China has seen more and more versions in recent years, readers who are not familiar with it might have trouble to choose one to begin. Surely the first version of this book is the most classic and authoritative one, of which the translator is Fu Weici, a respectable translator, for its serious diction and relatively thorough understanding of Maugham's language style. Some readers find some of its words being not smooth enough to fit Chinese writing and understanding style, especially against the modern way of speaking. Technically speaking, Fu's is generally dominated by the strategy of foreignization. However, as many new versions appear one by one, do they really surpass Fu's? If a new version just substitutes some words and copies the former one, the translator's intention and the meaning of his works deserves doubt. Hence a comparative study among different versions is necessary, which concerns the similarity and difference of their translation strategies.

Among the translators of these several new rising versions, Xu Chungang has expressed W. Somerset Maugham's idea in a more understandable way. In translatology, there is a term to describe the general style of Xu's book - domestication. Thus this paper tries to find out how the two strategies appear in the two works and what effect they might cause in their respective readers as well as the interpretation of original edition. Also the paper can explore how the subtle change in strategy influences readers' understanding.

Up to now, there are relatively abundant literary research on the novel. Yet only one paper, wrote by Yu Dian, can be found in the website of CNKI, which has analyzed the novel's translation from the perspective of translator's subjectivity and which has compared three Chinese versions of The Moon and Sixpence. That is to say, Yu focuses on the effect of different translators. Globally, the research of the novel's Chinese versions can be hard for foreigners. Thus it's reasonable to find that there is no one other than Chinese people being more suitable to do the research.

The meaning will be that the paper combines the two translation strategies and the comparison of Fu's and Xu's translation work. In this way the meanings of different strategies appeared in different place would be found out. Besides, by giving a critical and comparative analysis of the two typical Chinese translation works, this paper will touch upon the phenomenon of masterpieces' retranslation which is so popular nowadays in China's publishing industry. Also the paper will be a reliable reference for readers who show interest in The Moon and Sixpence but feel confused when facing with so many various versions.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

This paper would include a general review of the theories of foreignization and domestication and their clarification firstly. Then there would be some careful inspection of the typical examples of the two versions which have been mentioned for many times above, about how they are influenced by the exertion of different strategies, namely, how they are similar with and different from each other in lexical, syntactic and textual levels. In the end, the meaning and properness of the two general strategies showed in Fu's and Xu's books by the comparative analysis would be concluded.

Target

1. To gain a general idea of different performance of foreignization and domestication dominated by the two translators of Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence. Namely, to see the translation method and the translation techniques employed in each of them.

2. To learn the purpose of the two translators' employment of different strategies and the possible influence of their different impact on expressing Maugham's idea and his writing style.