Study On Zhao Susu’s Translation Of Sexual Descriptions In Lady Chatterley’s Lover From The Perspective Of Translation Ethics

Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the last and probably the most controversial novelwritten by Lawrence. The very first appearance of the novel in Florence, Italy in1920s has created a great sensation and caused ban from different countries becauseof the large amount of sexual descriptions within. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, whoseliterary value has been verified by many critics and scholars since its lift of the ban in1960s, is ranked among literature classics now. The novel has attracted manytranslators from different countries with its extraordinary literary value andcontroversy. There are at least10Chinese versions existing in China, including thosefrom Taiwan. It is of great significance to study the translation of the novel. Amongmany Chinese versions, Zhao Susu’s version is called the first officially acceptededition in its unexpurgated form published by the People’s literature press in2004.Once published, this version immediately became popular among Chinese readers anddrew attention of scholars and critics who were interested in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.The research of the novel began to increase year after year. However, this version hadsome defects. In order to meet the target culture’s expectation to the translated text atthat time, the translator Zhao Susu adopted special translation methods when dealingwith some sexual descriptions within the novel. His deeds absolutely influenced theintegrity of the novel and reflected his unfaithfulness to the source text.Considering that the current researches on the translation of Lady Chatterley’sLover are quite seldom, this thesis will make a case study of Zhao Susu’s version fromthe perspective of Chesterman’s translation ethics. Chesterman has proposed fivemodels of translation ethics, namely:(1) ethics of representation--to represent thesource text and the source author’s intention;(2) ethics of service--to fulfill the clients’ requirements;(3) ethics of communication--to achieve cross-culturalunderstanding;(4) norm-based ethics--to meet the expectations in the target culture;(5) ethics of commitment--to perform the oath of professional ethics. Ethics ofrepresentation and norm-based ethics are two models at micro-ethical level. Thesetwo mainly deals with the relationship between translator and text. The other threemodels belong to macro-ethical level translation ethics and deals with relationshipsbetween the translator and the real world. With the adoption of ethics ofrepresentation and norm-based ethics, the thesis made an instance study of ZhaoSusu’s translation of sexual descriptions in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.The study finds that Zhao Susu failed to fully represent the source text or thesource author’s intention when translating sexual descriptions in the novel. Histranslation of sexual descriptions met the expectation of target readers and targetculture at that time, which reflected his compliance with norm-based ethics. Thethesis then further studied the conflict between different models in Zhao Susu’stranslation of sexual descriptions in order to discover the basis of his “unfaithfulness”.The perfect translated text requires the translator to conform to translation ethics fromall sites, which is impossible in translation practice. Different models of translationethics may go into conflict sometimes and the fulfillment of one model has tosacrifice some others. It is decided by the nature of different models, and by targetculture’s influence upon translator. But the translator can take some ways toharmonize the conflict. Zhao Susu’s “unfaithfulness” actually comes from the conflictbetween different models in his translation.