Realization Of Faithfulness In Translation: Feasibilities And Limitations

Ru Lin Wai Shi is an excellent ancient Chinese novel with concise language and vivid characters. It is one of the best ancient Chinese classical satirical works. The Scholars, translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, is the closet translation to the original text. "The translation is smooth and accurate, and has reproduced the style of the original text" (Chen Meilin, 1994: 683). The translation has mainly adopted literal translation which is faithful to the original text.Presently, in the translation field there are many but vague statements on the principle of faithfulness. It has been widely agreed that faithfulness means to be faithful to the content and form of the original text. The thesis, however, attempts to reveal the connotations of content and form or more specifically, meaning and style. The author has introduced the seven types of meanings distinguished by G. Leech (1981) as a basis and has moved on to reveal the rich connotations of "social meaning". Social, historical, political and cultural meanings must be included in it. Based on this, the author believes that the interdisciplinary translation study schools are not denying the principle of faithfulness but advocating it by emphasizing different aspects of the text meaning, such as the historical meaning and the political meaning, which are included in the original text. However, these meanings at different levels might become contradictory in the translating process so that the principle of faithfulness has both its feasibilities and limitations. This thesis, in accordance with the Chinese English versions of The Scholars, taken from Library of Classics, adopts a descriptive method to explore the feasibilities and limitations of faithfulness in literary translation.Specifically, Chapter 1 gives a description of the agreement on the principle of faithfulness. Many translation schools and theories are included.Chapter 2 discusses the feasibilities of faithfulness. Faithfulness is feasible because of the commonness between languages, cultures and aesthetics, and the openness of the target language and culture.Chapter 3 is the core of this thesis, in which the limitations of faithfulness are fully displayed. These limitations are caused by the differences between languages and cultures, translation methods and the translator's qualifications, etc. Many examples are quoted and the various levels of faithfulness either achieved or not are analyzed.Chapter 4 goes further to the exploration of the general principles and strategies in literary translation based on the research of Ru Lin Wai Shi and The Scholars.The conclusions of the thesis are:First, in the translation of ancient Chinese literary works, the principle of faithfulness is the general principle.Second, faithfulness has both feasibilities and limitations due to many factors involved in the translating process.Third, the foreignization and domestication strategies are equally important, but foreignization will be more popular in the near future.In one word, in literary translation, only after we fully comprehend all the factors that may influence faithful translation can we properly handle many contradictions and improve our literary translation.In the meantime, in terms of the relationship between the realization of faithfulness, its feasibilities and limitations and translatability, though in almost every case, literary translation, especially the translation of cultural factors in literary works, proves to be difficult, translations are not impossible. What brings disputes is only the degree of translation.