On The Practical Criteria For The Translated Text

Translation criterion is the long-lasting topic of the most historical interest in the field of translation. It has always been very important both for translation theories and translational practice. As translation criticism develops and enlarges its study field, the denotation of "translation criterion" expands itself. This thesis circumscribes its discussion particularly on the assessment of the quality and value of the translated text, i.e. the criterion for the translated text. Based on the analysis of the achievements of the previous researchers, the author formulates a relatively operable evaluative system for the translated text.The necessity for the practical criteria lies in the following three aspects: (1) There is a common defect in all the translation criteria, which can fall into two groups: the abstract and the quantitative criteria. The former group (such as "Xin, Da, Ya", "Spiritual resemblance", " Transformation", "Readers' response" and "Truth, Beauty, Goodness" etc.), as a whole, is comprehensive by taking in all kinds of factors in consideration, but too abstract and inoperative without further elaborations. The latter group (such as Fan Shouyi's Fuzzy set theory in translation criteria, and Xu Shenghuan's mathematical model on the translation quality assessment) is much more objective and scientific, but inefficient because the complex mathematical operations on sentence-by-sentence evaluation are too complex. Both of them lack operability. So study on the practical criteria should be strengthened to elaborate a set of parameters, and offer the effective guidance to the particular translation evaluation. However, only few translation criteria tend to be practical. The representative is Feng Zhijie and Feng Gaiping's "Duality of translation criteria: information equivalency and information transmittivity", and eight sub-criteria: semantic criterion, logical criterion, rhetorical criterion, stylistic criterion, phonological criterion, syntactic criterion, textual criterion, and cultural criterion. There still are some defects such asthe lack of thorough elaboration of the eight sub-criteria, and the unreasonable relationship between the basic and the sub-criteria. (2) It is stimulated by the development of translation theories. The various contemporary translation theories with different research perspectives (such as polysystem theory, descriptive study, school of manipulation, skopos theory, and deconstruction, etc.) make contribution to the comprehensiveness of the practical criteria. (3) It is called for by the climax of translation activities. The diversity of translational practice (e.g. translation variations) claims for the objectivity of the practical criteria. And its boom in quantity demands that the practical criteria should be more operable and efficient for the guarantee of the translation quality.Thus a new evaluative system for the translated text is formulated with the purpose to make improvement in practicability. It consists of certain parameters. Primarily, it falls into the internal factors and the external factors. The former contains content, form and style, while the latter, readership and social effect. Content, usually can be analyzed in thematic nucleus, semantic volume and coherence. Form is further divided into wording and structure. Style can be represented by both form and non-form markers. Readers usually fall into the professional, advanced and average readers. Social effect of a translated text includes the political, economic and cultural effect. According to the satisfaction to the requirement of the parameters, the translated text can be located into one of the four grades: the optimal translation, the good translation, the average and the failed translation. The improvement of the new criteria in practicability is to be testified in the particular translation evaluation such as evaluation of the literary translation, argumentative translation and condensed translation, etc..Accordingly, the thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is a...