Creative Treason In Literary Translation-from The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Literary translation is a translation that deals with inter-lingual art conversion.Traditional translation studies believe that translators should minimize the creativity andtry to be faithful to the original. However, creative treason plays more and more importantrole in recently years. In1971, Katharina Reiss first came up the idea of functional theoryof translation in her book (Possibilities and Limitations in Translation Criticism). She heldthe opinion that the purpose and function of translation is different from that of theoriginal, in this case, translator should give priority to the functional characteristics oftranslation instead of the principle of reciprocity.”(Nord,2005:12) This theory provides anew perspective for the study of creative treason.This paper tries to apply Skopos Theory to literary translation to expound the necessityof creative treason in literary translation and propose to evaluate creative treason bySkopos Theory. First, the paper focuses on the background knowledge of the original text,such as the content and the style of the text. This part is important and necessary fortranslators, for these factors can guarantee the translation faithful to the original texts andauthors. The second part will introduce the relevant theories: the Skopotheorie, creativetreason and so on. All the theories can be seen as the guild of the translation practice. Nextpart will analyze the concrete example in the book The Road to Wellville to illustrate thenecessity of creative treason in literary translation. All in all, the translators should beresponsible for the original texts and target readers. As a result, the translators first shouldbe respect the original author and fully exert their creative treason to prolong the life of theliterary works.