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Abstract Abstract: The English version of The Story of the Stone is not as popular in western culture as we expected. Mr. Lin Yutang’s translation, which appeared recently in Japan, is conducive to the rethinking of the discrepancy. To address the issue, this article attempts to investigate his version in terms of narrative and textual themes and finds that China’s efforts to disseminate its literature in the West over the past decades have met with little success. The reason for this is that western cultural framing hinders Chinese culture from entering the West, and moreover most translators are somewhat ignorant of the mechanism involved. Lin’s rewriting of the Chinese classic in Lefevere’s words is due to his profound understanding of the hindering mechanism and hierarchical relationship of the western and Chinese cultures. He therefore tries to strike a balance between dissemination of Chinese texts and the hindering nature of western culture while translating the Chinese classic.
Key words: translation of classics; cross-cultural communication; translation of The Story of the Stone; Lin Yutang’s translation
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