A Study Of Translationese In English-Chinese Translation

The term of "translationese" has often been defined as "obscure and unreadable versions or even those nonsense ones", or simply, as for English-Chinese translation, the phenomenon of "Europeanization". A number of scholars and researchers have made incisive criticisms of this phenomenon in a variety of theses and works. Only a few have somewhat taken notice of the acceptability of translationese. Some even hold that translationese and "Europeanization" should be totally avoided in the translation because they do great harm to the Chinese language and the culture carried by it.The thesis, from a dialectical perspective, tries to make a comprehensive study of the problem of translationese in English-Chinese translation in four aspects: translationese and related studies, major forms and causes of translationese, rationality of translationese and limits to rationality of translationese.With the combination of elaboration of theories and analysis of examples, the author holds that there are at least two kinds of major forms of trandlationese: unacceptable forms and acceptable ones. As a result of that, the major causes of translationese are not so simple as some people expected or discussed. There are both subjective causes and objective ones, of which the former has always been paid much attention to while the latter little. In particular, the rationality of translationese and limits to rationality of translationese have quite often been ignored in some researches. The thesis discusses them from many perspectives like cultures of both the source language and target language, acceptability of the translation, faithfulness and equivalence (readers' response) and Chinese expressions.With a careful study of the problem of translationese, the author makes some points as follows: Firstly, a new definition should be given to the term of "translationese", or at least, should be paid attention to. The term of "translationese" not only refers to those obscure translations or terribly "Europeanized" expressions of nonsense, but also refers to those versions which, in spite of trace of "Europeanizaiton", are still both faithful to the original and acceptable to the readers. Moreover, some versions which have been taken as featuring translationese have, in fact, better reproduced the "flavor" of the original and enlarged the readers' information on the foreign culture and new expressions of English.Secondly, the introduction of translationese and foreign expressions in line with some basic norms, does no harm to our language or to our culture. Instead, these foreign expressions can benefit the development of our language and our culture as long as we take a dialectical stance towards the English language and its culture rather than those extreme stances like totally ignoring, pretentiously looking down upon or blindly looking up to the English expressions and the cultural information carried by them.Thirdly, although readers' response should be taken into consideration in translating, yet this factor is not the most essential one despite the importance of it for a good translation. Besides, readers' response may not be always the same; rather, it may differ from one person to another. And since the readers of the translation may come from a variety of manners of the society, then it is not strange to see different opinions appear among them. To be specific, some readers may accept the translation, while others may not, or, there also may be some readers who neither like the translation a great deal nor take a totally incisive stance towards it. What's more, the acceptability of the translation needs to be tested by time. The readers who can not understand or accept the translation at the moment may come to realize some day in the future that the translation is readable or even should be well-received.To sum up, the thesis, aims at making some contributions to researches in the problem of translationese and "Europeanization" and in other closely related problems, like criteria of translation, the acceptability of the translation, equivalence theory including formal equivalence, dynamic equivalence and functional equivalence, and cultural communication as well as the introduction of the foreign cultures to our own language and our culture. All these problems can be further discussed to make a comprehensive analysis and have a better understanding of some important problems in translating.