Exploring The Touchstone In Translation Criticism

Nowadays, with the development of cross-cultural communication, much attention has been paid to the theories and practice of translation. However, the progress of translation criticism has lagged far behind. One glaring effect is the immaturity of critical standards in assessing translations. The writer in this paper attempts to highlight some of the major problems involved in translation criticism, with a view to arrive at possible criteria for the evaluation of translations. The exemplifications are elected from Fortress Besieged, the English version of Wei Cheng, since its author Ch'ien Chung-shu (钱钟书) has profound literary knowledge of Chinese and English and his works appeal to the readers both in China and the west.Fortress Besieged achieved a great success with warm welcome when it was first published at home and abroad. Meanwhile, it also met some severe criticisms, which, mainly come from the perspective of the TL readers, totally ignoring the consideration of the translators' intention and their choice of translation strategies. This paper endeavors to rule out the bias by studying the translators' intention and efforts so as to reveal its translation strategies and methods as well as its stylistic features, aesthetic appeal and cultural transmission, and try to evaluate it more objectively and accurately.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction to the status quo of translation criticism as well as the criticisms upon Wei Cheng and its author. The paper explores the development of translation criticism which is warmly accepted both at home and abroad, yet still far from satisfactory. Norms and criteria of criticisms that are vague and lack of polish ought to be more systematic and standard. Chapter Two is a careful survey of the translation strategies and methods adopted in Fortress Besieged and tells the reason why the translators' choose these approaches. There are three important factors that should be taken into consideration concerning the translators' option of approaches according to Peter Newmark, namely text-types and language functions, the intention of the author and that of the translators as well as putative readership. Before analyzing the translators' choice of translation strategies and methods, the authoress makes careful explanations on the distinctions between the two technical terms, which is quite indispensable for further study.In Chapter Three, the authoress analyzes the stylistic features and aesthetic appeal contained in the translation which constitute the romantic charm of the ST and are supposed to be equally rendered into the TT. In Chapter Four the authoress examines the translators' treatment of cultural elements in Fortress Besieged, in which cultural barriers and varieties are carefully examined. The first part deals with the differences of culture-loaded words between Chinese and English in their conceptual and associative meanings; the second part discussed the rendering of various cultural words, such as customs of marriage, superstition and divination, social address system, euphemism and taboos, etc. The last part presents the conclusion about the translation assessment of Fortress Besieged—restating its strategies and methods, its stylistic features and aesthetic appeals as well as cultural transmissions, pointing out the limitations of the thesis, and making suggestions for possible improvement and further study.Since the age of globalization and post-colonial context call for the transmission of ideology and culture, we are duty-bound to let our great literary works better introduced into foreign cultures and maintain its original impact, and that's the very reason my translation criticism on Fortress Besieged is based on.