"Deceptive Equivalence" In The Chinese Version Of Harry Potter

Literary stylistics is defined as a discipline mediating between literary criticism and linguistics forms with the purpose of illustrating how the writer’s verbal choices contribute to the literary significance of the entire work. In fiction, deviant forms concerning graphology, lexical choice and syntax are frequently used to bring the thematic meaning into prominence and strengthen the aesthetic effects. Therefore, in literary translation, the translator is supposed to transfer all types of deviation from Source Text to Target Text to retain its thematic significance and aesthetic value of the Source Text. In most cases, however, the translator establishes the very equivalence similar to the original text in linguistic form, but quite different in literary aesthetic value or literary significance. That equivalence is referred to as "deceptive equivalence" which establishes equivalence at the level of "paraphrasable material content" without considering thematic function and aesthetic value. As a result, the Target Text and Source Text express the same idea, but produce the different literary aesthetic value.The present thesis, on the basis of literary stylistics, attempts to discover the "deceptive equivalence" in the Chinese version of Harry Potter and illustrate the function of literary stylistics in translation studies.Firstly, the thesis introduces the research background and theoretical development of "literary stylistics" and "deceptive equivalence"Secondly, with substantial examples selected from Harry Potter and its Chinese versions, a detailed case study is made at the graphological level, lexical level and syntactic level to identify, according to the analysis model of literary stylistics, the stylistic features of the Source Text. And then, the thesis discovers that the translator made a seemingly reasonable change about those deviant forms which are intentionally employed to bring the thematic meaning into prominence and strengthen the aesthetic effects. The investigation of deviant forms in Source Text is conducted as follows:In the first place, the ungrammatical graphological forms, including punctuation, spelling and paragraphing, which are uniquely used to portray the personality and tone, cannot be understood and appreciated. And then, they are corrected and even omitted. In the second place, the author has her own choice of diction:the choice of illogical lexical expressions, redundant lexical expressions and those unconventional ones. Those deviant forms are designed to highlight the image of the character and promote the plot development. Finally, in terms of syntax, parts of syntactic choices of the Source Text are featured by redundancy, complexity and the lack of coherence. Those deviant syntactic forms, however, are adopted to demonstrate the psychological progression and construct the plot.The exploration of those "reasonable" changes is made in the following part:First, the ungrammatical graphological forms, including punctuation, spelling and paragraphing, uniquely used to portray the personality and tone, cannot be understood, appreciated, even corrected and omitted. Then, some deviant lexical expressions are overcorrected and conventionalized. Thus, the image of the character is not accurately presented in the reader’s eyes and the theme cannot be highlighted. Lastly, those deviant syntactic structures, according to the convention of English language, are reorganized or modified. Therefore, the translator fails to achieve a vivid description of psychological activity depicted in the text and then, the theme is not fully developed.The main causes leading to "deceptive equivalence" are explicated as below:On the one hand, translators are not fully aware of the aesthetic function of those illogical deviant forms, which violate the convention of the language and employ some formal operations on those expressions, which murder the original aesthetic effect of the Source Text. On the other hand, translators are unable to identify and interpret the function of redundant encoding and try to conventionalize those of great relevance of literary significance and make a seemingly simple, concise version.In conclusion, through a detailed analysis of the three levels mentioned above, a conclusion is made that stylistic analysis can enhance the translators’awareness of stylistic devices and the unity of form and content, which helps to avoid "deceptive equivalence" in translation, thus, improve the quality of literary translation.