On Translationese

In this rapidly developing world, translation plays a more and more important role in international communication. With a proper translation, a reader can quickly and exactly get the attempt of the author and essential information contained in the original work.However, we can also find many inferior translations in which the features of the original language are usually retained to keep "foreign flavor". The source language text and the author are highly respected while the reader is ignored. In fact, the task of a translator is to bridge the author and the reader who have different languages and cultural backgrounds. They are equally important and cannot be separated. Nevertheless, in practice some translators are blindly faithful to the former and neglect the latter, therefore the balance is broken.Take English-Chinese translation for example, English and Chinese belong to different language families and are different in many aspects. The direct transplanting of the features of the original language, especially syntax, inevitably block comprehension. And the formal fidelity, resulting in unfaithfulness to the content and the impact of the message, is called translationese. This paper attempts to analyze causes of translationese and advance suggestions to guarantee the success of communication in light of Reception Aesthetics. This paper mainly comprises five parts:A brief analysis of present situation on translation is given in the introduction. Translation is playing an important role in the rapidly developing world, but it cannot be denied that poor translations are often found. It is difficult to understand those translations with unidiomatic collocations and foreign syntax, which will just waste the reader's time and even do harm to the young reader's mastery of their mother tongue. And it is worthwhile taking troubles to find the causes of translationese and solutions to it.Chapter One provides a definition of translationese and the distinctive differences between translationese and other terms such as foreign flavor, borrowed expressions, translation errors and word-for-word translation.Chapter Two begins with a brief introduction to Reception Aesthetics and analyzes the major causes. The first one is the translator's neglect of the differences between the SL and the TL. The second is the translator's insensibility to stylistic equivalence. A certain text is usually specific readers- oriented. If the translator fails to find the equivalent target readers, he often misses the original stylistic features and produces translationese. Finally, the TL culture's inferior position in a historical period often causes the translator to imitate the SL.Chapter Three puts forward strategies for avoiding translationese. First of all, a competent translator must have the essential abilities: he or she must be bilingual, bicultural, specialize in one or more areas of knowledge such as chemistry, international law and have the knowledge of translation theory, such as translation standards, the relationship between the author and the reader. Besides, a translator should study the original work carefully before translating. Finally, he had better be skilled at translation techniques.A conclusion is drawn in the last part. Since translationese violates the rules of the language of the present readers and blocks comprehension, it should be removed. However, to eliminate translationese does not mean refusing all the elements of a foreign language, because any language needs to be enriched by absorbing some elements of other languages with the communication between cultures. The key point is what is absorbed should not conflict with the typical features of the TL. The task of a translator is to keep balance between the author and the reader.