A Contrastive Study Of Translation Views At Home And Abroad

The question of how to establish our own translatology in China has been discussed for a long time. There are two opposite ideas. One holds that China has already formed its complete translation theory system, and there is no need to introduce Western translation theories; the other holds that there is not a complete translation theory system in China yet, so Western translation theories must be taken as the very basis to establish China's own translatology. The author of the dissertation holds that though Chinese and English belong to two different language families and take on different characteristics under the influence of different types of mode of thinking, language universals far outweigh the divergences and people's understanding of translation's nature and function is rather identical. Therefore, basic theories on translation in China and the West are similar and the core issues of the two systems should be consistent. To prove this, the author chooses Yan Fu, Fu Lei, Qian Zhongshu to represent Chinese translation views and Nida, Newmark, German functionalists to represent Western translation theories respectively and tries to probe into the consistency of their translation theories.The paper is divided into five parts.The first part is the literature review of the predecessors' achievements on the translation views and the writer's purpose of writing this dissertation as well as my creativity.The second part is Chapter One, which is a general survey of Chinese translation theorists Yan Fu, Fu Lei, Qian Zhongshu's basic translation views.The third part is Chapter Two, which is a general survey of the Western translation theorists Nida, Newmark, and German functionalists' basic translation theories. This chapter serves as the theoretical basis for the comparison that follows.The fourth part, Chapter Three, is the nucleus of the paper tomake a tentative study of their translation views with some illustrative examples which show(?) that though their translation views are expressed differently,the core issue of them is consistent. They all agree that:a). a translation must be faithful in spirit to the original;b). a translation must be as expressive as the original and the translator can change the forms if necessary;c). a translation must have the same kind of impact on the receptor as the original.The fifth part is to review the development of China's translation views in recent years and the development model:reflection-reference-assimilation-innovation. And this part is just a conclusion of the whole dissertation.Yan Fu, Fu Lei, Qian Zhongshu are to China what Newmark is to Britain and Nida to the U. S. and functionalists to Germany.Although these masters approach translation criteria from different perspectives and in different ways, the content and basic theories are alike. So the right way to establish China's own translatology is to inherit the traditional Chinese translation views and borrow the useful parts of the Western translation theories. The author sincerely hopes the dissertation will make certain contribution to the solution of the long-existing debate on the construction of translatology in China.