Classical Chinese Outside The Applicability Of Research In Chinese Translation

In a sense, Chinese modernization was wholly modeled after the Western civilization. In this process, Chinese, as a language, became Europeanized gradually, which accordingly lowered the quality of Chinese literary creation. Therefore, some Chinese scholars call for a return of Chinese traditional culture and classical Chinese. Triggered by this reflection on Chinese modernization, this thesis takes the low-quality of literary translation as the result from the Chinese Europeanization and the absence of Chinese tradition, and researches into the applicability of classical Chinese in literary translation.After the starting-point of the thesis is stated, in chapter one, the related findings abroad and at home are combed through, and the values and meanings of such research are explained; In chapter two, the features of classical Chinese and literary translation are defined. Though there may exist many defects in the translated version in classical Chinese, it might not be reasonable to deny completely the utility of classical Chinese in translation. It is the duty for a translator to exploit its favorable conditions and avoid unfavorable ones; Chapter three expounds theoretically the possibility and necessity of translating in classical Chinese. While translating, a translator is expected to compare the source language, literature and culture with the target ones in order to find the accordance between them. The larger the sphere for comparison is, the more options there are for a translator, which means that he can be more active in the intralingual translation process. The return of classical Chinese and its literature tradition will provide a translator more opportunities and options for translation. Moreover, this can also be taken as a way to resist the invasion of the Western cultures which is in a strong position and will probably strangle Chinese culture; In Chapter four, the experiences of some famous translators are collected and summed up. It is proved by facts that classical Chinese is still be applicable and effective in coining new expressions, and constructing long sentences neatly to convey the meaning of the source texts and copy their rhetorical methods, in expressing the styles and intertextualities of the source texts, and in back-translating to disclose the historical relationships between source culture and target culture.This thesis combines the theoretical analysis into the sum-up of experiences, the internal researches into external researches of translation studies, and makes full use of the advantages of different research paradigms. It turns out that, though it's impossible to replace modern Chinese with classical Chinese, we will have to admit that classical Chinese can be still partly used in literary translation, which helps to reconstruct Chinese national culture, reproduce faithfully the contents of the source texts, and the their artistry as well.