A Case Study On Retranslation Based On Three Chinese Versions Of Don Quixote

Don Quixote, written by Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes, is a novelconsidered the most influential work of literature for the Spanish Golden Age and theentire Spanish literary canon. Since Lin Shu and Chen Jialin co-translated it intoChinese at the beginning of the twentieth century, there have been more than twentyChinese versions for it. Retranslation of classics is not uncommon, and it attracts moreand more scholars to study on. There, however, is no complete set of theory to study thecause of retranslation, to guide the retranslation and to offer the evaluation standards forretranslation. Therefore, this is a case study of retranslation based on three Chineseversions of Don Quixote.First, this study confirms the notion of retranslation and indirect translation by abrief review of Don Quixote’s first translation and retranslations. Indirect translation ismentioned because the first Chinese version by Lin Shu and Chen Jialin was indirectlytranslated from English version, not the original Spanish. It was in1978that the firstChinese version by Yang Jiang directly translated from Spanish was published.Second, this study, which takes three Chinese versions of Don Quixote as examples,analyzes and studies the inevitability and the necessity of retranslation, especiallyretranslation of classics, from the perspective of aesthetics of reception, and on theaspects of translators, readers and social culture.Third，in this study, the author of it makes a try to study on how to evaluateretranslation relatively all sidedly, which makes up the main part and is the maininnovative point of this study. Based on the previous studies, the author found that themajority of scholars concentrated on the necessity of retranslation, while very few ofthem have involved their studies in how to evaluate retranslation. In the author’sopinion, first, retranslation is a kind of translation, so it can be evaluated by thestandards for translation, as far as a single retranslation version is concerned. Second,retranslation is also a special kind of translation. As there are several, at least two, the first and the new, translated versions, the evaluation system of retranslation is bound tocontain a comparative study. And this study will try to discuss the contents and themethods of comparison. Third, through the comparison of various versions, the authorof this study found that a simple text comparison is one-sided. Therefore, to guaranteethe all-sidedness of the translation study, other factors should be taken into account.Through the above research, the author of this study proposes a bold idea: in addition toevaluating different versions in accordance with certain principles, the evaluators canfurther the study by putting forward their own constructive translations. Such translationwill be the closest to the so-called final perfect version one, since it will have drawn theessence of every version.In the last part of this study, the value of retranslation will be explored. Obviously,retranslation has become a tendency, in spite of the different opinions from academiccircle. It is self-evident that successful retranslation works do good to the improvementand popularity of the translated literature. Even for a relative unsuccessful one,excluding those copies, false and ungrounded ones, comparative study can beundertaken according to the differences among different versions. Laws of translationcan be found, and experience of excellent translators’ can be promoted throughcomparison, which is the main part of a new branch of learning—comparativetranslatology. Therefore, to some degree, the study of translation advances the theory oftranslation. On the other hand, different translated versions of the same work help a lotfor a thorough understanding of the original, which will also play a role in promotingthe development of comparative literature.