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William Faulkner's Three Short Stories:Chinese Translations with an Introduction

William Faulkner undoubtedly ranks one of the best and most influential writers both in America and in history. Among his various works of art, the most famous ones are those set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, which is molded out of his ¡§native soil.¡¨ Despite their Southern setting, these works convey something universally true. As Faulkner often claims, he is just a story-teller, telling about man in conflict, about how he ¡§endures and prevails.¡¨ Before he received due recognition, Faulkner wrote quite a few short stories which he expected would help him improve his economic condition, so that he could write novels at ease. Nevertheless, although he was motivated by economic interests, many of these short stories turned out very prominent. In my thesis, I translate and discuss three of his outstanding short stories--¡§Dry September,¡¨ ¡§Red Leaves,¡¨ and ¡§An Odor of Verbena.¡¨ By so doing, I hope I can introduce Faulkner¡¦s world to his Taiwan readers, who might too easily reject his major novels for their complexity and long-winding sentences, but would be glad to savor the more accessible short stories.
The introductory part is divided into three chapters, beginning with a brief account of the author¡¦s life and fiction. In the second chapter I discuss mainly the theme of ¡§conflict¡¨ and the stylistic features in these three stories. Then, in the last chapter, giving some instances from my own translations and those by three translators in Mainland China, I try to demonstrate why translation is a demanding task.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0718101-143428
Date18 July 2001
CreatorsChen, Mei-ting
ContributorsYa-huei Lin, Shu-fang Lai, Chenchiun Chung
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0718101-143428
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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