Translation Criticism: A Case Study On The Two Chinese Versions Of Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone

Owing to the popularity of "Harry Potter" series around the whole world, the academic researches on "Harry Potter" prosper and cover many provinces, including translation studies. As the main informative media for non-English readers, the translation qualities of the series attract more and more attention. The translation problems like the contrasts between the richness of the originals and the semantic inadequacy and distortion and structural incoherence of the translated versions supply translation researches on the theme with studying cases. So far many monographs and dissertations about this theme have been published. But among them, it is hard to trace the employment of translation criticism on "Harry Potter". It is pitiful for the marginal position of this field. So the author chooses translation criticism as her angle to study two Chinese versions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone which is marked by its remarkable applicability, guidance and instructiveness.Two Chinese versions refer to the Traditional Chinese version published by Crown Publishing Plc. in Taiwan (Taiwan version in short) and the Simplified version published by the People's Literature Publishing House in the mainland of China (Mainland version). Through the careful data analyses built on multiply classified comparisons between two versions, the author attempts to access the translation strategies employed by two translators (Peng Qianwen in Taiwan version and Su Nong in the Mainland), to get to the possible roots of translation merits and defects and to evaluate the translation effects and qualities of the two versions. The basic theoretic support comes from Peter Newmark's "equivalent effects" based on Eugene A. Nida's "functional equivalence". The author also follows theoretical guidance from Newmark and Katharina Reiss in translation criticism to formulate the thesis into five chapters which cover the contextual introduction, the guiding theories and methodologies, the Source Text (ST) analyses, classified comparisons between the ST and the Target Texts (TT), evaluations of translation strategies, effects and qualities and a conclusion. In the researches of test effects, the main methodology is Newmarks' "Back Translation Test" to retrieve the TT back to the Source Language (SL). The author tries to reaches following goals through the thesis: "to improve standards of translation; to provide object lesson for translators; to throw light on ideas about translation at particular times and in particular subject-areas; to assist in the interpretation of the work of significant writers and significant translators; to assess critically semantic and grammatical differences between SL and Target Language (TL)." After a series of detailed and in-depth analyses of the ST and the comparative studies of the two Chinese versions, the author comes to a conclusion that the Taiwan version has a relatively better equivalent effects and quality because the translator paid great attentions to the readership orientation. Moreover, she applied semantic translation strategies flexibly and devoted to details. But the Mainland translator favored literal translation strategies and paid less attention to details and obstacles. Two translators had different tendencies towards alienation and domestication. (Mainland translator tended to the former while Taiwan translator tended to the later.) And the author believes the differences between alienation and domestication can answer why two translators created different styles and employed their translation strategies. So the author calls for translators to learn from their merits as well as the defects. The author believes the deepest root for the diversities appear in two versions still lies to translators' intentions.