Guojianzhong’s Translation Thought And Practice Studies

Professor GuoJianzhong is not only a prominent professor of ZhejiangUniversity, but also a notable translator in contemporary China. He was an associateresearcher at Washington State University, a researcher at the University of Illinois atChicago, Deputy Director of Translation Theory and Teaching Committee of theTranslators Association of China, President of the Translators Association of Zhejiang,and Deputy Director of Foreign Literature Committee of the Writers’ Association ofZhejiang. Now he holds the post as Honorary President of the Translators Associationof Zhejiang and Consultant of the Translators Association of Hangzhou.Mr. GuoJianzhong has earned his status for his noticeable achievements in thefields of translation theory, translation practice and translation teaching. Integratingtranslation practice, teaching and research into one, he has persisted in studyingtranslation theory from a dialectical materialist point of view and shows his ownunique insights on some debated issues and applies his ideas to his translation practiceand teaching. He has written a series of influential papers, such as Cultural Factors inTranslation: Alienation and Adaptation,On the Translation Concept ofDeconstruction, C-E/E-C Translation: Ideas and Methods, Translation Unit in C-ETranslation, etc. His translation thought receives assiduous attentions in thetranslation circle in our country.In the past thirty years, he has written plentiful works, some of which areproperly appreciated by his professions. So far, he has published his translation papersand monographs about one million words, among which are ContemporaryTranslation Theories in America, Translating Popular Science Writings and ScienceFiction: Theories, Techniques and Practice, and compiled a collection of essays ontranslation entitled Culture and Translation. His first book Contemporary TranslationTheoriesin America introduces and analyzes the translation research achievements inAmerica, in which the introduction of the research achievements made by the ChineseAmerican scholars filled the blanks in our translation studies. Translating PopularScience Writings and Science Fiction: Theories, Techniques and Practiceis the first scholarly work of its kind in our country, a beginning of the rise of our systematicresearch on the subject. It is regarded as a path-breaking work in our translationstudies.Mr.GuoJianzhong’s masterpieces in literary translation are Robinson Crusoe andMoll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, Deerslayerby James Cooper, Ironweed by WilliamKennedy as well as dozens of short stories by Isaac Singer and Saul Bellow. He hasalso compiled several series of translations of science fiction, amounting to more than50books in addition to translations of some screenplays and other kinds of books. TheRoad to Science Fiction (in six volumes), co-edited with James Gunn, formerPresident of the Science Fiction Writers’ Association of America, is regarded as thetreasure of science fictions and has had wide influences among the SF writers,researchers and readers in our country. Because of his outstanding achievements intranslating science fiction into Chinese, he has been awarded Karel Capek Prize forSF Translation in1991by the World Science Fiction Society, and until now he is stillthe only one in China who has won this honor. He also won the Golden Bridge Awardfor SF Translation at Beijing International Conference on Science Fiction in1997. Aseries of brilliant rainbow has been left in his translation studies and translationpractice. Hence he is regarded as “an excellent contemporary translation researcher”and “an outstanding translator of science fiction” by Ye Zinan, a famed translator.Mr. Li Yashu, former editor of Chinese Science and Technology Translators Journal,praised him as “a banner in the circles of Chinese translators and translationresearchers”. His name can be found in Chinese Translator Dictionary, Dictionary ofContemporary Middle-aged and Young Humanity Scientists of China, ChineseTranslation Dictionary and Dictionary of Translation Studies in China and otherrelevant translation and social science books.However, Mr. GuoJianzhong has received little attention for his remarkablecontributions to the cause of Chinese translation and translation studies. Few peoplein the circles of translators and researchers have made researches on his translationworks, and even fewer have made comprehensive and systematic studies on histranslation thoughts and practice. Based on an extensive collection of literature on Mr. GuoJianzhong’s translation activities and a systematic study of his ideas ontranslation, the present dissertation is intended to make a comprehensive andsystematic review of Mr. Guo’s translation ideas and practice in the perspective ofcultural communication and the Harmonious Translation Theory. The dissertation alsoexplores Mr. Guo’s unique ways of thinking and emanative translation studies and hisrich E-C and C-E translation works, and upon the reflection, rethinks the integrationof the traditional Chinese translation theory with the Western translation theory. Wewill also study Mr. Guo’s harmonious translation thought, and further discuss theincreasing impacts of Mr. Guo’s translation ideas and practice on today’s literarytranslation, so as to promote the development of translation studies and practice inChina, and particularly in Zhejiang. This author also makes some tentativesuggestions for constructing China’s translation theory that adapts to China’s situationand cultural characteristics of the Chinese language.The dissertation consists of five chapters.Chapter One IntroductionThis chapter gives a brief introduction to Mr. GuoJianzhong’s experiences intranslation and his contributions to translation studies, making clear the background,purpose, significance, research methods and the scope and the structure of the paper.Chapter Two Introduces the Theory of Harmony and the HarmoniousTranslation TheoryThis chapter first traces the semantic evolution and the cultural logic of thistheory, deals with the relation between the Theory of Harmony and translation;secondly, the paper explores the cultural heritages concerning the Theory of Harmonyin the East and the West; and thirdly, it interprets the origin of the HarmoniousTranslation and its five aspects contained in the harmonious translation theory,namely ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, cultural views and ethics of theharmonious translation. Chapter Three Studies Mr. GuoJianzhong’sHarmonious TranslationThoughtMr. Guo’s speculative belief is that theory and practice are equally important.This chapter firstly discusses Mr. Guo’s harmonious translation thought. The paperexpounds such issues as his ideas on the integration of the traditional Chinesetranslation theory with the Western translation theory, on translation equivalence,translation unit in C-E translation, translatability\untranslatability, literal\freetranslation and domestication\alienation translation, etc. This chapter alsodiscusses Mr. Guo’s aesthetical, cultural and ethical principles of translation in hisharmonious translation practice.Chapter Four Studies Mr. GuoJianzhong’sTranslation of Classical Novelsand Science FictionsMr. Guo thinks the language should be fluent in the premise of being faithful tothe original works in translation, and he insists that translation should realize thecomplete unity of faithfulness and smoothness. The paper makes an analysis ofDefoe’s classical novels in their descriptive, analytic and comparative methods.Firstly, the paper studies Mr. Guo’s translation strategy in his translation of Defoe’sclassical novel in the two perspectives of the use of colloquial language and therealistic narration, and then we deal with the three criteria of literariness, popularityand scientificity in the translation of science fictions and make an exhaustive analysisand argumentation of Mr. Guo’s harmonious characteristics shown in his translation.Chapter Five ConclusionThis dissertation introduces the research results, its limitations and the expansionfor further studies.This chapter firstly summarizes Mr. Guo’s achievements in the translationstudies, the translation of classical novels and science fictions, and then we make aninformative interpretation of his original views, summarize the main viewpoints andthe findings and finally, the author points out the limitations of this research projectand offers expansion for further research. The author thinks that the research methods may be improved upon and thescope for the studies expanded, and that the present paper still remains to be perfectedin its depth and width by supplying more first-hand materials in Mr. Guo’s translationpractice. The author of this paper thinks that using corpus for empirical research willprovide us with more ample argumentation in the analysis of the literary works.