A Translator's Creative Treason In Literary Translation

Translation is a cross-language and cross-culture communication. With the "cultural turn" as one of the most important dimensions that translation studies gained in the late 20th century, translation studies and researches have broken through the traditional linguistic and aesthetic pattern and come into a stage of cultural introspection. Great importance has been attached to the study of translation from the cultural perspective.Literary translation is a process of artistic recreation. It has its unique artistic and aesthetic features. "Creative treason" is one of its important features.With the inspiration from translation theories as well as from translation practice, the author of this thesis makes a systematic study of translator's creativity and treason in the context of literary translation through a comparative study of three English translation versions of the classical Chinese work Shui Hu Zhuan.The thesis takes the essential problems of literary translation as its focus, pins down its key concepts and features, and analyzes the interaction, in terms of the overall artistic effect between the original and the translated works. By offering sound theoretical basis and corresponding accurate examples, it probes the positiveand negative impact of the translator's creative treason in literary translation, which enables us to see the reflection of the translator's aesthetic flair, literary competence, cultural identity and translation orientation.By means of exploring the objective existence, root and manifestation of creative treason, the present study also reveals the cultural significance of creative treason in literary translation. It is the translator's creative treason that extends the artistic life of the original work. And the translation itself will exert an influence on the target literature, and it will even participate in the construction of the target culture.However, the translator's creative treason is restricted by the specific purpose of translation, the aesthetic norms of the target reader, the literary norms and the ideological norms in the target culture.