A Study Of Chinese-Korean Literary Translation Criticism

Humans have always been pursuing knowledge and development of new things. Ever since the Babel Tower was erected, humans speaking different languages have been conveying information and emotions by means of translation, so that they get to promote mutual understanding, reach consensus and realize harmonious development.Translation has been playing a significant role in human civilization, and translated works may influence people’s thoughts and deeds; therefore, the quality and translation is positively important.Translation criticism, translation theory and translation history are three major components of translation studies. At present, with the active development of publication, translated books account for a large proportion in published works. Chinese-Korean translation activities are also in full swing. Since the establishment of Chinese-Korean dipmatic relation in the1990s, translation practices and translated works have been all along on the increase. In contrast to translation between Chinese and other languages, however, there are not so many studies of Chinese-Korean translation, nor are there adequate criticism on Chinese-Korean translation activities and works, especially on contemporary literary works. Therefore, analyses of translated works combining translation theory and practice can not only find problems in translation but also put forward effective translation strategies and methods. This will play a positive part in the improvement of the quality of translated works and in the perfection of translation theories, so that theories and practices can be integrated and balanced, and a healthy translation environment can be formed.The studies of Chinese-Korean literary translation criticism generally focus on quality assessment, particularly on case analyses of translation errors in lexical and grammatical aspects. Integrating translation theory and practice, this dissertation makes a comparative analysis of texts and conducts comprehensive studies on the whole text (ST:TT1:TT2). It also carries out translation criticism on the translated versions, taking both intra-and extra-text factors into account, and discusses translators’strategies and methods.This dissertation consists of five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction which states the objective and significance of this study, defines the subject and method of the study and reviews the existing studies and their drawbacks.Chapter Two puts forward some linguistic and cultural issues related to literary translation and the emphasis is place on translation theory.Chapter Three explores the major theories and methods of literary translation and translation criticism, text types and features of literary works, characteristics of literary translation, translator’s quality, translation strategies and methods. It further explores translation criticism theory.Chapter Four is the core part of this dissertation, addressing in detail literary translation criticism through combination of theory and practice and comparative study of ST:TT1:TT2. This chapter comprises two parts:the first part explores extra-textual factors including source text, author, introduction of works, target text, translator, translator’s strategy and method, and readers’ acceptance and criticism. The second part explores intra-textual factors including analysis of content and form. Content refers to lexis, syntax, text, stylistics, rherotic devices, addition, omission, translationese, etc; forms refers to punctuation and notes.Chapter Five is a conclusion which summarizes what has been addressed in this dissertation. It also provides an account of the limitations of the present study and suggest topics for further research.