The Art Of Treason, The Beauty Of Creation

In the late 20^th century, the translation studies experienced the 'cultural turn'. This new paradigm of translation studies has broken through the traditional paradigm which is highly prescriptive, empirical, and confusingly vague. It is an orientation towards the function of description and explanation of translated work. The followed "polysystem theory" speeds this 'cultural turn' and people began to realize that translation, being one form of rewriting and manipulation, is simultaneously a norm-governed activity and Skopos-based action."Creative treason" was initiated by a French literary sociologist Robert Escarpit in his book Sciologie de la Litteature (The Sociology of Literature) in 1958. He holds that translation is always a kind of creative treason. "Creativity" in literary translation demonstrates subjective endeavors on the translator's part to approach and reproduce the source text by using his/her artistic creativity, while "treason" in literary translation reflects objective betrayal to the source text in the process of fulfilling the subjective intention. Creativity and treason, in fact, are interrelated and intermingled and can't be separated from each other in literary translation.Comparatively speaking, creative treason is a new concept which is worthy for further research. It is beneficial for foreign works to spread wildly at different levels and helpful for readers to accept the source text easily. Furthermore, it can rediscover the value of the original work by disclosing the unexplored latent meaning of the original work. With it, more and more literature masterpieces have been popularized and accepted beyond the limitation of region, time and space. Hong Lou Meng (A Dream of Red Mansions) is a shining milestone in Chinese Literature and the distinct individual style of its two translators- Hawkes and Yang Hsin-yi - qualifies it as an ideal object of the application of creative treason theory. The research of these two is of certain significance.This thesis is composed of five parts:Part one is a general introduction. 'Cultural Turn' and polysystem theory are...