Literary Translation: From Fidelity To Creative Treason

Fidelity, like a totem for numerous translators, has been exerting powerful influence over literary translation. Though the criterion for literary translation started with fidelity to the source text (hereinafter referred to as ST) meaning, and even has gone as far as to abusive fidelity, all these are grounded on the false assumption that translation is a simple language transfer under an ideal condition. Robert Escarpit indicated that creative treason is the right key to literature communication. This paper emphasizes that in the actual translation process, creative treason is unavoidable due to the influence of translation skopos, social norms as well as the diversification of ST interpretation and discrepancy between languages and so forth. Meanwhile, creative treason also provides a point of reference at which to discuss ways of conducting criticism and evaluation of translated literary works, and confirms the positive roles translators play so as to uplift their social and economic status.