Reconsideration Of The Translation Fidelity Study

When it comes to translation fidelity, people have different opinions toward it, from ancient times to modern times, from western cities to China. As a matter of fact, they until now have not reached an agreement about it. The traditional fidelity puts stress on equivalence, considering fidelity as a basic principle for translation. However with the postmodern thoughts coming out, especially with the "rewriting" put forward by Andre Lefevere. Traditional fidelity has faced the biggest challenge than ever. Translators and scholars started to question it, and even worse, fidelity has not been mentioned by them. Translation increased greatly since China opened to the world, however, some translators apparently forgot to be faithful when they translated, translation fidelity is not the center it once was. This thesis to begin with is trying to draw attention to fidelity of translation which is nearly forgotten by translator, emphasizing the importance of helping to introduce Chinese culture to the world. Secondly, this thesis is trying to analyze Journey to the West translated by WJF Jenner, pointing out that the translator was being unfaithful to the source text followed by a couple of reasons and solution so as to call it back. There are three aspects the translation should be faithful to:being faithful to source text, being faithful to the writer’s implication and being faithful to source text’s culture. On a foundation of fidelity being back, this thesis will put forward improved translation fidelity which means to be faithful to the target reader. In the end, this thesis will propose a harmonious fidelity which is the combination of source language-oriented fidelity and target language-oriented fidelity.The conclusions drawn from this thesis are as follows:(1) Translation fidelity has always been an important principle that guides the translation practice, it can not be ignored or even abandoned, as long as translation exists, fidelity will never be out of date.(2) On the basis of traditional fidelity, we need improved fidelity which refers to faithfulness to target language.(3) The combination of source language-oriented fidelity and target language-oriented fidelity is the harmonious fidelity which helps to guide the translation practice effectively and serve the strategy of Chinese culture going out as the guiding principle for translation...