Title: Study on the Acceptability and Influence of the Chinese Translation of Gankutsuou

Abstract: During the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, there emerged plenty of Chinese versions of Le Comte de Monte Cristo, a novel by French novelist Alexandre Dumas. Taking the Chinese versions of Gankutsuou (Le Comte de Monte Cristo) serialized in Sichuan literary supplement The Record of Recreation and Leisure from 1914 to 1915 as the research subject, this paper tries to explore the translation characteristics of the novel, reader’s acceptance, and in particular, the influence on the creative translation of General History of Matsuoka. Through this case study, the paper expects to comb out the translation activities and the then social and cultural background involved, so as to demonstrate the complicated moods in the acceptance of western novels in early Chinese mainland.

Keywords: Gankutsuou, translation characteristics, General History of Matsuoka

Author: Ling Yu, Professor, School of Foreign Studies, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan, Hunan, China.