Creative Treason: Concepts, Theories And Historical Description

Being a critical concept of medio-translatology, creative treason represents the understanding, translation and interpretation of the original text, which betray the original meaning set up by the author in the course of the spread of the original text in the context of receptor language. Aiming at the problems existing in the academic circle, this paper analyzes and describes the various elements which lead to creative treason, the conformation of creative treason in given historical discourse and the cultural significance in the context of receptor language on the base of close reading of many translated texts and original texts, by using the method of combination of theory construction and historical description.With the help of philosophical hermeneutics, the first chapter of this paper makes use of the theory of understanding to explain and verify the validity of creative treason. Restricted by the fore-understandings of the translator, which composed by ideology, poetics and traditional culture, the translator is impossible to reconstruct the original for subjective or objective reasons. Creative treason represents the generation of meaning in the course of horizon fusion of the translator horizon and effective historical horizon carried by the original text. Early translations of Lord Byron's The Isles of Greece show how translators betrayed the original and reflected their own imagination on the poet in the course of understanding and translation. Three characters that of universal, historic and original prescriptive have been illustrated on the basis of the previous analysis.The study of creative treason would not be integral and penetrated if the exploration of subjectivity was not made. The second chapter explores the relations of various subjects of creative treason and translation, concerning the author, translator and reader and the inter-subjectivity manifested in the co-construction and interaction of meaning. On the base of criticism of opposition of subject and object and the traditional subjectivity by modern philosophy, the restriction of translator's subjectivity in the power discourse of the receptor environment has been analyzed. Person does not necessarily compose subject. On the contrary, elements in the receptor environment, such as ideology and poetics show subjectivity in the translation discourse. The subjectivity of translator shows itself not only in the differences in the governing of a certain ideology and poetics, but also in the arrogation of power.Being the representation of collision, exclusion and fusion of different cultures, creative treason reflects the turn of cultural paradigm and various possibilities of the development of receptor culture in the initial stage of the communication of different cultures. Therefore, it is significant to study the creative treason in this period. The following chapters describes the novel translations of Late Qing Dynasty, examines the subjectivity of receptor ideology and poetics and the conformation of the fusion of cultures.The third chapter describes the characteristics of the historical discourse of Late Qing Dynasty, the manipulation of ideology in the novel translation and the resistance of violence from Other text. The mainstream discourse of novel revolution in Late Qing sponsored by Liang Qi Chao and some others, in short of clear ideology, made the novel discourse in Late Qing clamor and manifold. Creative treason in translated novels also showed a manifold character. For different political aims, Liang Qi Chao, Su Man Shu, Wu Jian Ren and Lin Shu rewrote the original, made voices in translated novels and constructed a clamor and polyphonic practical discourse space. Being the representation of culture collision and fusion, creative treason shows a dilemma existed in the translated novels in Late Qing, that is translators in Late Qing managed to achieve various motives, reformation, revolution or enlightenment, but at the same time, they keep a distance from the original, resisting the violence with different method and in different degrees. Creative treason in dilemma records the spiritual experience of thought, faith, practice and struggle of our nation, with the fate facing great setbacks and challenges.The Chinese traditional novels in the vernacular and novels in classical Chinese have different narrative traditions and different narrator characters. The narrator of novels in classical Chinese, who is object and calm, seldom talks with the receptor and intervenes the form and content of the novels. On the contrary, the narrator of novels in the vernacular, with great passion, talks with the receptor continually and inserts great deal of narrative interventions. The fourth chapter describes the conformation of the translated text in Late Qing manipulated by the two different poetic traditions. The narrator of translated novels in classical Chinese also seldom inserted comments in the air of free translation in Late Qing. The original narrator of Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu(Uncle Tom's Cabin) translated by Lin Shu and his operators often walks out of the covert state and talks with the receptor. The narrator of the translated text controlled the same desire and cut down the interventions in the original. Thenovels in the vernacular, however, keep the identity of story-teller. Several novels in the vernacular published in the magazine of New Novel have large numbers of form and content interventions, which do not exist in the original. In doing this, they maintained the authority of traditional narrator of novels in the vernacular. The commenter of these novels also intervened the narration and formed a polyphonic relation with the narrator of translated novels.The cultural collision and fusion implicated in the creative treason shows its significance and value, especially in the cultural turn of translation studies. The conformation of creative treason in the translated text, the explanation of its formation and the communication of literature and culture it represented should be analyzed and described, through close readings of translated texts and original texts, in the writing of history of translated literature.