Translator's Role In Literary Translation

By introducing the Reception Theory, this thesis tries to explore the role of translator in literary translation, especially in the translation of Chinese literature classic Hong Lou Meng. The thesis classifies translator's translation process into three stages: understanding and interpreting of SL text; formulating text in TL; reviewing the translated text. Thus, the translator plays a triune role—reader, formulator and reviewer.Apart from taking implied reader into consideration, the translator has other demands to meet, among which are patronage, poetics and the SL text.Almost half of the thesis is devoted to the comparative study of the two English versions of Hong Lou Meng. Translated by Xianyi Yang &Gladys Yang and David Hawkes respectively, both versions have enjoyed wide circulation and exerted great influence. Owing to different backgrounds, motivations and strategies of the translators, the two versions have noticeable distinctions in many aspects.The thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is a literature review, in which the thesis looks back on important schools of translation studies in history, and the tendency of shifting focus onto the role of translator in recently years. The second chapter introduces Reception Theory to analyze the triune role of the translator. The third chapter explores factors other than reader which influence the role of the translator—patronage, poetics and SL text. The fourth chapter is devoted to the comparative study of the two versions of Hong Lou Meng. The last chapter sums up the competence of the translator in three aspects.After elaborations of the above chapters, we have at last come to the conclusion as follows: (1) the role of the translator should be recognized; (2) re-translation of classic literature works should be encouraged; and (3) a qualified translator should be of linguistic, cultural...