A Study On The English Translation Of To Live From The Perspective Of Translation Ethics

To Live translated by Michael Berry is symbolized with the representation of the Other and keeps a balance between the source and the target reader, and thus successfully transmits heterogeneous literature. The translation ethics provides a new perspective for translation studies, in particular, owing to its comprehensiveness on translation ethics, the five models of translation ethics put forward by Andrew Chesterman is largely applied into the studies on the practice of translation. This thesis will analyze the demonstration of translation ethics in To Live with Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics, and then find out how the translator represents the Other and what kind of measures he takes to remedy the barriers caused by the remained source culture elements so that the translated text meets the target reader’s expectation and that the cross-cultural communication moves smoothly.This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter mainly discusses the research background and the significance of the research based on the current transmission situation of Chinese literature works. The second chapter describes the present studies on translation ethics and To Live at home and abroad. The third chapter discusses Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics, covering their main contents, advantages and disadvantages, and contradictions among them. The fourth chapter, taking the five models as theoretical basis, chiefly analyzes the demonstration of the ethics of representation, ethics of communication and norm-based ethics in To Live, and concludes that the translator represents the cultural elements and adopts some translation measures to show his respects for the Other and to ensure the readability of the translated text at the same time. The last chapter summaries the significance of To Live in the translation of Chinese literature works from Chinese to English from three aspects: the representation of the source culture(idioms, folk songs, images and culture-specific words), the remedying measures(supplement, variation and edition) adopted by the translator and the trust among the participants.