On Creative Treason In Literary Translation: A Case Study Of Sun Zhili's Translation Of Pride And Prejudice

This thesis is a study on "creative treason" based on the analysis of Sun Zhili's translation of Pride and Prejudice in terms of Skopos theory.Translation plays a vital role in cultural communication. Literary translation requires an artistic realization of the exotic essence of the source text as well as the equivalence of the linguistic form. Faithfulness and treason compose a contradiction in translation.Since the cultural turn in the 1970s,translation studies have gradually shifted the focus from the abidance by the "faithfulness/equivalence" principle to the survey of subjective factors in translating. Linguistic and cultural differences between languages have caused the awareness of introducing a new understanding for the traditional translation criterion. Literary translation is then mostly regarded as a process of recreation, in which creation and treason are essential characteristics.In this case, the term of creative treason is brought forward, which is viewed as the embodiment of subjectivity of translation and is defined to be the regeneration of the life of the source text in the target culture. From the cross-cultural perspective, it is concluded that translation aims in nature at the accomplishment of its intercultural communicative aims.In the meantime, literary translation is impossible without creative treason of the translators, who are the subjects of translation.This thesis tends to examine creative treason under the skopos rule , that is, to survey the intentions of the translators' subjective endeavors in literary translation and the causes. In addition, it reexamines creative treason and proposes the author's individual opinions of the definition and effects of creative treason. Creative treason in the thesis is defined as creative activities of the translators,driven by a specific purpose,while interpreting and constructing by using their subjectivity on the four levels of words, content, structure and aesthetic effect from the original text. Creative treason exists in forms of addition, paraphrasing and omission.To sum up, differences do exist between languages. And an image in one culture might not contain the same connotation in another. The methods of realizing fidelity in traditional translation theory face difficulties and obstacles, and unavoidably creative treason appears. In order to fulfill the task of cultural communication, the translator should be creative in the translated version of the text to render the implied meaning by various means in the concrete translation process, such as addition, paraphrasing and omission. Hence, creative treason is, in substance, faithful to both the author and readers. Nowadays, coexistence of different kinds of culture is the unavoidable tendency, and creative treason is an access to keep the essence of the original text and bring the freshness to the target addressees, for the sake of stimulating the multiplicity of cultures of human beings.