On Faithfulness And Treason Of Literary Translation

Literary translation is recreation of literature. Literary translation text should and must bear the features of literature: rhyme beauty, ambiguity, vividness and plenteousness. Because of the differences between English and Chinese, there should be conversion and addition in the course of translation between the two languages. The seemingly"treason"is in disguise of"faithfulness". Because it aims at representing the spirit and style of the original work more accurately, it is for realizing the literary appeals of the original work to a greater extent. It goes without saying that the conversion and addition should be based on the thorough understanding of the author's intention.In Chapter 1 and 2, the thesis argues about the certainty of treason in literary translation text. In Chapter 3, the thesis focuses on the techniques of conversion of part of speech, sentence pattern, image and figure of speech. The techniques of addition of personal pronoun, conjunction, preposition, tone, modifier and how to recreate artistic conception are also discussed in the same chapter. In the following chapter, the thesis deals with the topic that any translated version should advantage the target language. Several techniques of enlightening Chinese's advantages are also studied in detail. Most of the examples set in the thesis are from the different translated versions of the famous literary pieces as A Dream of Red Mansions, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Fortress Besieged, and so on. Their differences in realizing the literary effects are the bases of the argumentation of the dialectical relationship between faithfulness and treason in literary translation.In the final part, the author concludes that in the practice of literary translation, real faithfulness to the original is not decoding the text word-to-wordly in another language. It is superficial faithfulness. When language form and spirit contradict, the translator should be faithful to the later and thus be inevitably treasonous to the former.