On Mistranslation In Retranslations

In recent years, there are more and more retranslated Chinese versions of Western literature masterpieces. Retranslation is helpful and beneficial not only to translation studies, but also to the development and diversification of Chinese culture.This thesis takes the translation and retranslation of The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn as its subject, and finds that the later versions are not necessarily superior to the former ones -the later versions can not avoid mistranslations, either. Few scholars of translation studies have concerned themselves with mistranslation in the retranslations of the same classic under the background of "culture turn", although such studies will make the study of mistranslation valuable, and gives mistranslation studies a fresh look, because the study of mistranslation in retranslations is not merely the work of fault-finding at a linguistic level, and intentional mistranslation is likely to bring about a new interpretation to the original work. By drawing upon Philosophical Hermeneutics and Reception Aesthetics, this thesis mainly explores various mistranslations by offering a close relationship between mistranslation and Hermeneutics as well as Aesthetics of Reception. Such conceptions as Heidegger's fore-structure, Gadamer's prejudice and three properties of interpretation (universality, creativity and historicity) and Reception Aestheticians' insightful statements on "reader" shed new light on the study of mistranslation.According to the factors that lead to mistranslation, mistranslation falls into two pairs: intentional versus unintentional, and linguistic versus cultural. Linguistic mistranslation may result from misspelling, misreading and mistranslation in stylistic form. Linguistic mistranslation (except those resulting from stylistic form mistranslation) and unintentional mistranslation should be avoided to the greatest extent, while intentional mistranslation is compatible with cultural mistranslation, which should be excused and is acceptable. Mistranslations in retranslations are inevitable and they tend to accompany retranslations.