| Today, almost in every scientific study, there is a tendency to consider the subject from several different angles; translation study is no exception. Translation in itself is a subjective and complex process. Every translator has his own principles of translating, and these can display very great variation, due to the creativity of the translator. "It is an established fact in Translation Studies that if a dozen translators tackle the same poem, they will produce a dozen different versions" (Bassnett, 1991:26). The adequacy of translations has traditionally been judged on the basis of the correspondence in lexicon and grammar between the source language and the target language. However, in recent decades the academic world has seen the gradual introduction of objective criteria into translation evaluation; moreover, the progress seen in "Translation Studies" has led to a better understanding of how translation works, as well as to the proposal of TQA (translation quality assessment).It was James S Holmes who put forward in 1972 the pioneering and controversial concept of "Translation Studies", a scientific discipline in his sense. More and more scholars now agree that translation has become an important field of activity warranting scientific study. The writer believes that "Translation Studies" as a discipline has "come of age" and will soon be a fully-fledged academic subject just like literature and linguistics, and that any scientific work in terms of translation can and should be done from within the discipline and not from without.The quality assessment of a translation is a hard nut to crack since there is no universal canon according to which translated texts may be assessed. The present thesis is an attempt to suggest an outline of practical criteria for translation quality assessment in the field of "Translation Studies". The outline is restricted to the assessment of the translations of English narrative fictional texts into Chinese. This does not mean that it cannot be applied to other text types or that the direction of translation cannot be reversed. Yet, certain adjustments may prove to be necessary if another text type is chosen or the direction of translation is reversed.The rationale of the research is not a particular theory of translation, but a set of theories, from both China and Western countries. The reason is simple: all theories concerning translation serve the same purpose, though with emphasis on different aspects or from different perspectives. All of them are complementary to, rather than contradictory, to each other. They combine to contribute to Translation Studies. Some influential Chinese and Western translators and their theories are duly discussed to find how well they serve TQA, as well as literary translation studies.The thesis is composed of three chapters. Chapter One focuses on literary translation. In it, literary translation is studied with the emphasis on the characteristics and pitfalls of fiction translation. The differences between literarytranslation and non-literary translation are clarified. The developments of fiction translation in China and some famous Chinese literary translators are surveyed.Chapter Two discusses some translation theories and suggests ways of assessing translations. In it, the role of translation theory is emphasized. Some theoretical approaches to translation quality assessment are summarized, while attempting to trace the overall evolution of this subject field from the early developments of almost pure literary and linguistically-based translation quality models to recent functionalist approaches to translation. The Chinese and Western views on translation criteria are studied. The quality assessment criteria for English-Chinese literary translation are provided.Chapter Three is a case study. In it, the proposed criteria are applied to the assessment of the translation quality of a novel. In doing this, a well-known novel, GONE WITH THE WIND, by Margaret Mitchell is introduced. Some passages from the novel and the...
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