Intertextuality And Literary Translation

Intertextuality, a text theory put forward by French semioticians Julia Krestiva, refers to the interrelationship between texts. It aims at exposing that the meaning of a text is not self-existent, but from its pre-texts, inter-texts and the whole sociocultural knowledge system. The theory of intertextuality is a theory of text encoding and decoding; literary translation, especially classical literary translation, in nature is a process of text comprehension and text reproduction. Therefore, literary translation may gain both theoretical and practical insights from the theory of intertextuality.In this thesis, the author attempts to incorporate the intertextual theory into literary translation by analyzing the translation of intertextual signals in Xixiang Ji, an intertextual-rich classical Chinese drama. The research aim is to reveal that intertextual theory is conducive to the translator in source text comprehension, target text reproduction and choice of translating strategy so as to provide a translated work of top quality.This thesis consists of three main parts.The introduction gives a brief survey of intertextual theory and literary translation, and the research aim and structure of the present thesis.The first part is literature review. The history of the term intertextuality and Hatim and Mason's research into intertextuality and translation are introduced.The second part presents the theoretical and practical insights the theory of intertextuality gives to literary translation. Epistemologically speaking, literary translation in light of intertextuality is a special intertextual activity and the source text and the target text form an intertextual relationship. Methodologically speaking, literary translation mainly involves in the translation of intertextual signals.The third part is a case study. After a brief introduction to Xixiang Ji, the Chinese version, and Romance of the Western Bower, the English version, the author divides the intertextual signals into five categories: cultural images, social conventions, puns, allusions, and literary quotations as intertextual signals; and detailed analyses of typical examples in each category are presented respectively.Finally, the author reaches the conclusion that the theory of intertextuality endows the translator with a brand new perspective and broadens the former enclosed...