Levels Of Style Distortion In Fictional Translation And Potential Causes

Style transfer is both an important and a hard job in fictional translation. As a cross-language and -culture communication, translation is subjected to the impact of a series of complicated factors in the target culture, and, in the process of such a communication, the source text may suffer distortion in many aspects, among which, style distortion is one of the most significant, and may do harm to the original work's artistic effect and literary values. This paper aims to explore the main levels at which style distortion usually occurs and the potential causes concerned in fictional translation. To make this research relatively more systematic and scientific, a theoretical basis is borrowed from western stylistics. Taking advantage of the strongpoints of Formalist Stylistics, Functionalist Stylistics, Literary Stylistics, Affective Stylistics and Socio-historical/Socio-cultural Stylistics, this paper describes and analyses the style of Dickens's novel David Copperfield and that of its several Chinese versions, and reveals that the original style can be distorted and deformed at such levels as phonology, grammar, syntax, lexis, graphology, cohesion and narrative pattern. Meanwhile, this paper analyzes and expounds two main causes responsible for style distortion: linguistic difference between English and Chinese and historical-cultural influence in the target culture, with each cause containing several different sub-categories—for the aspect of language, there exists difference in phonology, grammar, syntax, lexis, graphonology and discourse cohesion between English and Chinese; In terms of historical-cultural influence, there are such factors as literary tradition, ideology, translation purpose, national style, epoch style, translator's lack of sensitivity to stylistic features and effect and translator's personal style and so on.The great difference in language and culture and the various complicated contextual factors in translation make it possible that the original fictional style will suffer from distortion more or less at many levels. However, we must point out that, the levels at which style distortion occurs are not clear-cut and separated from eachother, but are more often than not related with each other, affecting and governing each other in one way or another. What's more, the causes responsible for style distortion in fictional translation are not isolated from each other either, but are in most cases overlapping, interacting and influencing each other, forming accumulatively a complex network which shapes the general style of a translated text and distorts the original one.By taking advantage of the achievements of western stylistics and some inter-disciplines concerned, this paper carries out a relatively systematic, comprehensive and theoretically-based study, exploring the levels of style distortion and their main causes. In this way, I hope to turn away from the traditional empirical and impressionistic discussions on style translation, trying to make the argument relatively more scientific and systematic; in the meantime, the author tries to remind fictional translators to be consciously sensitive to the stylistic features of a fictional text and intentionally guard against distortion or deformation of the original style in the process of translating, so as to minimize style distortion as possible as s/he can and maintain the original artistic values maximally.