Creative Treason In Literary Translation Through Comparison Of Chinese Versions Of Pride And Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice, as the masterpiece of Jane Austen, has been widely studied in China and the translation of it has always been a hot spot in the field of translation. Based on Hans Vermeer’s Skopos theory, this thesis attempts to explore the phenomenon of creative treason in literary translation through a comparative study on two Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice.Traditional translation theory holds that the translator’s role as "servant "or "slave" will always require him/her to keep "faithfulness" and "smoothness" as the criteria of translation, and to pursue the equivalence of meaning and the style. Different from other types of translation, literary translation uses a special kind of literary language, making it difficult to reproduce the artistic conception and cultural connotation of the source text. Then, during translation, taking various factors into consideration, the translator needs to change his/her role and give full play to the initiative.As the main part of German functionalism, Skopos theory regards translation as a purposeful activity which pays more attention to the reception of the target readers rather than translation equivalence. It also advocates that the ends justify the means. Driven by certain translation purposes, the translator will have to make some adjustments in terms of the content, language and style. In the meantime, the translator’s creative treason is to approach the source text on a deeper level and to make the translation function in the target culture.Based on the three rules of Skopos theory, namely, skopos rule, coherence rule, fidelity rule, the author of this thesis makes a comparative study on two Chinese versions of Pride and Prejudice with the aim of exploring how the two translators resort to creative treason in different aspects. In addition, inspirations and translation enlightenment concerning creative treason are also put forward on the basis of the author’s own translation experience.Through comparison, the author finds that, during the translation of Pride and Prejudice, to offer a more acceptable version, the two translators handle differently in such aspects as language form, cultural images, sentence structures and the choice of words. The author then concludes that "creative treason" and "faithfulness" are not in conflict. In literary translation, to accurately convey the spirit and artistic feature of the source text, the translator has to make some change on the source text. This change, however, is to reach "faithfulness". It can also be concluded that in this era of cultural diversity, creative treason has made great contributions to cultural exchanges between different languages and left new room for translation studies.