A Study On Creativity In Literary Translation From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

For a long time, according to the traditional translation theory, atranslator should be completely objective to reproduce the meaning, verse and style ofthe original text in his translation, even at the cost of his visibility. Generally speaking,it is only an ideal for a translator to achieve absolute equivalence between the originaltext and the translation. In fact, the translator is the subject who renders in response tothe demand of the society. On the premise of transferring the relative objectivity,facticity, reliability and rationality of the messages, the translator can present hisemotions, style of expressions and rational creativity to some extent. Literary translation,different from other types of translation, calls for the translator's creativity. Literarytranslation is not only the transferring of languages and literal meaning, rather it isrequired to represent the authenticity of literary works so as to contribute the sameaesthetic feeling of the target readers with that of the source text readers. Thus literarycreativity is a key issue of literary translation. With the development of translationstudies, translation has been situated in a much broader and more complex researchenvironment, which affords a new perspective for the study of the creativity in literarytranslation. The author of this thesis attempts to apply Lefevere's rewrting theory to acase study of Fu Donghua's translation of Gone with the Wind in order to explain thetranslator's creativity in terms of intrinsic factors and extrinsic factors in the course ofliterary translation. The thesis divides its discussion in the following five parts:Chapter one gives a brief introduction to the creativity in literary translation, thesignificance of this study and the research methods. By means of descriptive andcomparative approach with a case study, this thesis attempts to interpret the intrinsic and extrinsic factors constraining the translator's creativity from the perspective of rewritingtheory to manifest that the translator's creativity in literary translation can give thetranslated text a second life in the receiving culture.Chapter two introduces some representative traditional concepts of translation,such as "faithfulness" and "unfaithfulness", the translator's "invisibility" and"visibility", showing that that the traditional translation theory usually puts emphasis onthe study of the internal text. With the cultural turn in translation studies, manytranslators and scholars put forward various revolutionary translation concepts. Forexample, James Holmes emphasizes the study on "faithfulness" and "unfaithfulness" inthe receiving culture. By analyzing the traditional translation standards—"equivalence"and "faithfulness", Toury puts forward the "norms" which govern the production andreception of a translation in his target-text theory. Moreover, Lefevere introduces therewriting theory, a totally novel theory in the world of translation. According toLefevere, translation is a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings are constrained bycertain ideology, poetics and patronage in a given period. Lefevere's rewriting theorypaves a new way to the research on creativity in literary theory.Chapter three dwells on literary translation with emphasis on the creativity inliterary translation. The translator's creativity is necessary in literary translation becauseof the linguistic and cross-cultural differences between two different languages. On theone hand, the creative translation can increase the value of the original text; on the otherhand, it may lead to the loss of cultural information. However, the translator's creativityis subject to both the intrinsic factors such as the translator's translation principle,aesthetic orientation etc., and the extrinsic constraints, such as the ideology, poetics andpatronage in a given time, thus the original text gains its second life in the receivingculture.Chapter four analyzes Fu Donghua's creative rewritings in his translation of Gonewith the Wind, such as translating the title into "Piao"; translating the persons' namesand geographical names into the ones in Chinese style; lots of abridgements andadditions. The author tries to show that Fu's creative rwritings come from his intrinsicfactors and also from the socio-cultural constraints including the ideology, poetics andpatronage in the war time. Therefore, Fu's creativity in translation is justifiable whichmakes it possible for the original text to be more well-known in China.Chapter five is the conclusion. The above discussion and analysis shows that the translator's creativity in literary translation is necessary and unavoidable which can givethe translation a second life in the receiving culture. However, a translator's creativitycan not be extended immeasurably since the translator has to conform to the originaltext in the end. Lefevere's rewriting theory proves to be powerful in explaining manycomplex issues of translation, while it can not interpret all of the translation phenomenaperfectly because of its own shortcomings. Anyway, the author believes that the latertranslation theories will reach a new level in explaining the translator's creativity inliterary translation.