On Scientific Nature Of Literary Translation--from The Perspective Of Stylistics

As a discipline mediating between linguistics and literary criticism, literary stylistics provides a new perspective for literary translation studies. According to stylistics, the concern of stylistics as a discipline mediating between linguistics and literary criticism can be simply and broadly defined as thematically and artistically motivated verbal choices. The author in this thesis holds that stylistics is of great significance in helping explaining the much-debated issue of the nature of translation, particularly the scientific nature in literary translation.Since literary translation is highly artistic in nature, many scholars, especially those working in the field of literary translation, often ignore or even deny its scientific nature. According to this thesis, different from common writing, translation is a linguistic activity involving bilingual conversion and should base itself on the original texts and act on the general rules of bilingual conversion. Only through the analysis of the thematic meaning and aesthetic value can there be a faithfully artistic translation; in contrast, if a translation is not based on stylistic analysis of the original, only by which can the thematic meaning and aesthetic value of the original be grasped, it is easy to make pseudo-equivalence, that is, the translation seems highly artistic but fails to bring out the true meanings and artistic effects of the original.