Recreation In Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Imitation

In regard to the definition of Imitation, history of Western Philosophy not only accepts that art is the presentation of existence, but also accepts that creators have brought their subjective initiative into creation. On the basis of western philosophical, literary and critical theory of imitation, this thesis, through analyzing Howard Goldblatt’s translation of My Life as Emperor, demonstrates the dialectical relationship between imitation and recreation at the linguistic, cultural and textual level, and also clarifies the ambiguous viewpoints of imitation and recreation in translation from the nature of translation and the former studies on imitation.Translation in essence is a kind of creatively imitating behavior. Especially, literary translation innovatively overcomes the limitations of translation by the unification of faithfulness and creativity. With the deeper development of translation studies, it’s impossible to realize the equal conversion between two different languages, so recreation in translation is an inevitable reality, in which translator properly changes the content and form of the original text when correctly understanding the intention of the author. The relation of Imitation and recreation is dynamic and dialectical in literary translation. Imitation lays a foundation for recreation, and recreation is the raising of imitation to a higher level. Furthermore, imitation regulates recreation at the linguistic, cultural and textual level of two languages to avoid the anarchism and remain the faithfulness of translation.This thesis by perusing literature combs the application of imitation in translation at home and abroad, the attributes of recreation in literary translation, and the former studies of Chines-English(C-E) translation and Howard Goldblatt’s translation. It also points out the blank in translation studies of philosophy of imitation and Chinese modern literature. The third part is the theoretical foundation, which generalizes the features of C-E translation, the basic means and three levels of imitation, and the inevitability and adapted norms of recreation in literary translation. The fourth part is the main body of this thesis---case study on the imitation and recreation of Howard Goldblatt’s My Life as Emperor through the methods of text analysis and contrast analysis from the perspective of linguistics, culture and text of two languages, which specifically demonstrates the dialectical and dynamic relationship between imitation and recreation.