Translation Of The Non-source Language In Literary Texts-A Metalinguistic Perspective

This thesis explores the relationship between the literary text with the non-source language and its translated text, with metalinguistic theory as the theoretical background, and proposes the translation strategy regarding the non-source language translation based on the theoretical framework of the relationship. The non-source language refers to the language or languages other than the main narrative language in a source text. Conventionally, when source texts are to be translated, the non-source language in the texts would also be directly translated into and become part of the target language. But this practice often begets logical errors or, due to the special features of literary texts, results in the incapability of the author's message being conveyed intact, with the non-source language deprived of its unique form as a language different from the source language. When approaching from the metalinguistic perspective, the research finds that there exist languages of different levels between the source text with non-source language and the target text. On one hand, translation can be seen as a process of the target language, written in metalanguage, talking about, analyzing and explaining the source text written in the object language; On the other hand, the non-source language and the source language are also languages of different levels in the source text, respectively object language and metalanguage. It is the overlapping of different levels of language that results in self-referentiality that causes the logical error. Therefore, this difference within the source text should be reflected in the target text, which is written in the metalanguage of a higher level, to separate overlapping levels of language. Thus, as regards the translation of non-source language, the thesis comes to the conclusion that the form of the non-source language in literary texts should be preserved in the target text so that any logical errors or damage to the intactness of the message due to the change of form can be avoided. Meanwhile, its literal meaning can be provided in other forms such as footnotes. The thesis also discusses popular translation strategies nowadays dealing with the translation of non-source language, proposes the one most suited and agreeable with the theoretical framework and further carries out a survey to test its feasibility.