A Contrastive Study Of Lin Shu's And Ezra Pound's Translations

This thesis is intended to make a contrastive study of Lin Shu's and Ezra Pound's translations. It is common knowledge that Lin knew no foreign languages while Pound acquired faint knowledge of Chinese. In light of traditional studies, Lin's and Pound's translated works are abundant in treasons to original texts. These two translators, whom were supposed to remain invisible in their translated works, were constantly condemned from general critics owing to the serious violation towards the prerequisite of "faithfulness" and "equivalence". Meanwhile, the critics found themselves in a dilemma for they had to acknowledge the vivid tone and profound significance of Lin's and Pound's translations. It is beyond saying that there are reasonable factors among the previous comments. Anyway, translation is far from being a mere transference of linguistic signs from one language into another. Those comments, which were carried out at linguistic level, belong to prescriptive approach and, inevitably result in the birth of conservative bias.With the emergence of "Cultural turn" in Western translation studies in 1970's, many schools which emphasized on "target-text specific", were taken shape, known as Polysystem Theory, Manipulation Theory, Philosophical Hermeneutic, Deconstructive Theory, Dialogue Theory, so on and so forth. These theories provide us brand-new perspectives as well as theoretical framework for reexploring Lin's and Pound's translations.Different from the traditional studies, the present thesis, which is not intended to fulfill an evaluative study of translation skills and techniques on textual level, but strive for casting aside the traditional pattern of "source-text specific". Cultural translation perspective has shed new lights on the investigation of Lin's and Pound's particular social and cultural positions. Chapter I , the ontology, briefly traced the evolution, the patterns of Chinese and Western traditional translation studies alongside with their essence. It is "faithfulness", together with "equivalence" that brought about traditional evaluations on Lin's and Pound's translations. Chapter II and Chapterlll are both epistemology. By employing Polysystem Theory and Manipulation Theory, this thesis concentrates on the following two points: a) the translation motivations and strategies of Lin and Pound were strictly restricted by the respective source language culture; b) during the specific translation process, Lin and Pound had no choice but made necessary deformations due to different poetics, ideology and patronage. This thesis highlights the inevitability and rationality of mistranslations in...