Abstract
“The Californian's Tale” is one of the novels written by Mark Twain, a well renowned English novelist. This paper endeavors to carry out a comparative study of three Chinese versions of this novel. Through this comparative study, this paper aims to discover the differences in translation strategy, textual-linguistic level and the profound socio-cultural background. It starts with a general introduction of this novel and its Chinese translation versions. Then it is followed by a discussion of the linguistic level of the three Chinese versions: firstly it compares the language style of the three Chinese versions in terms of diction and syntactic structure. Then a comparative study is carried out from the socio-cultural perspective. This part focuses on the historical backgrounds and translators’ mission in doing so. Finally the thesis analyzes the differences in translation strategies and the reasons for them.
Keywords  The Californian's Tale   Chinese translation versions   historical backgrounds   translation strategy

   马克•吐温是19世纪后期美国现实主义文学的杰出代表。作为第一部译介到中国的马克•吐温著作，《加州人的故事》至今已有多个中文译本，本文从众多译本中选取吴梼、周瘦娟和王泉的译本作为研究对象分析比较各个译本。
本课题主要通过以下三个方面进行研究：一、细读各译本，研究其遣词造句的不同之处。从而对比各个译本之间的文体差异。二、查阅资料。研究各个不同版本所处不同时期的时代背景、意识情态、历史使命地位等。从而深入体会各译本中所传达的历史代码。三、学习中西方翻译理论，了解相关的翻译学及比较文学研究的探讨方法。
关键词  加州人的故事   译本对比   历史代码  翻译策略

The Californian's Tale is Mark Twain’s first novel translated into Chinese. For the first time, Chinese people got to know this talented author. Up to now, there have been more than 5 Chinese versions of this novel.
This thesis is a case study of three Chinese versions of The Californian's Tale from several different perspectives. It attempts to find some differences among the three versions and discusses the reasons behind them. The three Chinese versions are Wu Tao’s version in the 1910s, Zhou Shoujuan’s version in the 1920s  and another modern version, Wang Quan’s version in 2010 .