Creative Treason In Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Cross-cultural Communication

Translation,the main means of cross-cultural communication,plays a crucial role in Chinese culture’s going-out.However,there exist more or less differences on linguistic and cultural levels among different nationalities and countries.And thus in the process of translation as cross-cultural communication,some information of the source text will be inevitably lost,distorted or added.“Creative treason” is the core concept in medio-translatology.It means the comprehension,translation and interpretation deviating from the intention of the author of the source text when the text is spreading in the target language context.The term “creative treason” was put forward by Robert Escarpit,a sociologist from France.In his book Sociologie de la Literature(The Sociology of Literature)published in 1958,he pointed out,“Translation is always a sort of creative treason.Translation is treason in placing the original in a totally unpredictable reference frame(i.e.another language),and translation is creative in endowing the original with a brand-new visage,enabling it to enjoy a brand-new literary interchange with a wider range of readers;in not only prolonging the original’s life,but also giving it a second life”(Escarpit,1987: 137).In the book Medio-tranlatology,Professor Xie Tianzhen totally agreed with Robert Escarpit and considered that creative treason “conveys the essence of translation,especially literary translation” and “creative treasonhappens from the beginning to the end of cultural transmission activity which is cross-age,cross-space,cross-nation,cross-language.(Xie Tianzhen,1999)This paper is mainly composed of five chapters.Chapter One mainly discusses the definition and classification of cross-cultural communication,analyzes its three stages,transmission,collision and fusion,and demonstrates the inevitability of creative treason in translation as cross-cultural communication.Chapter Two discusses the definition,classification and causes of creative treason.Chapter Three and Chapter Four analyze the phenomena of creative treason in the English version,Wolf Totem at the linguistic level and cultural level respectively.And Chapter Five discusses the values and limitations of creative treason in literary translation from the perspective of cross-cultural communication.All of these come to a conclusion that creative treason is inevitable in cross-cultural communication,Howard Goldblatt appropriately adopted individualistic translation,omission,adaption and many other translation strategies in the English version,Wolf Totem.And these intentional or unintentional creative treason phenomena appeal to target language readers’ cultural ideology and reading habits,achieving a good cross-cultural communication effect.