Creativity In Literary Translation

The traditional original-text-centered translation theory ?a translator should be objective to reproduce the meaning, verve and style of the original text in his translation ?leads to a dream of absolute equivalence between the text and the version. A translator is the subject who transfers messages in conformity to the demands of the society, representing his own emotions, style and rational creativity on the premise of relative objectivity, facticity, reliability and rationality of message transference. Translation, especially literary translation, calls for translators' creativity. On the foundation of modern philosophical hermeneutics and related theories, the present thesis makes an academic study of creativity in literary translation and some related issues.The process of literary translation is analyzed briefly in Chapter 1 after the general introduction of some traditional norms of translation. As the subject of translation, a translator is liable to bring his subjectivity in the translation process, and thus what he translates is not the original text but another text shaped in his brain that differs and also derives from the source language (SL) text. We name it "derivational text". As a result, the translator does not take the SL text as his direct object of his translation. The existence of derivational text is the root of the creativity in translation.In Chapter 2, we focus on the study of the SL text. The four characteristics of literary texts are listed as expressive function of language, power to evoke, importance of form and cultural factors, which determine that the text, to some extent, is subjective and therefore it acts as the object as well as the co-subject of translation. The meaning of a text, as the combination of denotation and connotation, can be discovered only by being read and understood, and is restricted and influenced by times, society, thoughts and so forth, which determines the directionality and openness of the original text and provides the objective proofs for the call for translators' rational creation.Then, we make an in-depth study of translators and their creativity in Chapter 3. We probe a translator's working mentality and deem that the essence of the translating process is the representation of the translator's social being for hisworking mentality is always in the direction of from self-perfection to self-exhibition and to self-realization. Self-perfection is for better self-exhibition, and self-exhibition is for better self-realization. The self-selections of a translator are the representation of, on the one hand, his esteem to the original works, on the other hand, the creativity, aesthetic principle and value of his own. Self-perfection and self-exhibition are carried out through the whole translation process and self-realization is the realization of the translator's creativity and subjectivity virtually. In the light of the concept of "pre-understanding" posed by Gadamer, we consider fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception as the different translators' different social and psychological unities, which result from the social and cultural context, and they are the different unities that constitute the presupposition of the translators' creativity. These differences among the different social and psychological unities are manifested during the understanding process as the difference of the translators' choices and biases. Translators' pre-understanding and expectant horizons are the supply of soil for the translators' creativity. Then, the thesis poses an analysis of the characteristics of understanding in literary translation. They are historicity led by translators' historicity, multiformity led by polysemy of literary signs and openness led by difference of schematized aspects of different translators. And therefore we arrive at the conclusion that the existence of more than one creationary derivational text is legitimate. We also do a thorough research on translators' thinking. With a large number of examples, we examine the most common modes of thinking inv...