A Contemporary Interpretation Of Ma Jianzhong's "Good Translation" Theory

Nowadays, more and more translation theorists are devoted to studying and interpreting traditional translation theory from the contemporary angle in order to supply the modern translatology with nutrition of tradition. Although they have made great success in this field, there are much left to explore, for example, the study of good translation theory. Good translation theory is mentioned by many translation theorists, but a deep and rather thorough research about this theory is in need.In this dissertation, the methodology of logical analysis, deduction and induction will be adopted. Firstly, Ma Jianzhong's education, career, thought and life will be introduced, which reveal the historical background of good translation theory and the reasons why it's Ma Jianzhong who puts forward such a brand-new translation theory---"good translation". Then, the content of Ma Shi Wen Tong is introduced and analyzed, which further explains and verifies the linguistic theoretical basis of"good translation". Ma Shi Wen Tong is a breakthrough of Chinese linguistic study in that it employs contrastive, analytical methods to proceed with modern linguistic study. These modern linguistic study methods are displayed in"good translation", too. In"good translation"Ma advocates to analyze and contrast the original text and target text on the levels of words, sentence, and style. Secondly, the author analyzes good translation theory from the angles of linguistics and reader's response, giving it a modern interpretation. The linguistic thoughts of phonology, syntax, semantics, etymology, stylistics, and contrastive linguistics contained in"good translation"make it different from the traditional Chinese translation theory. Besides,"good translation"explicitly proposes that the reader's response be the standard of evaluation of translation quality, which is innovative in traditional translation study history. Through the comparisons between the reader's response notions in"good translation"and modern western translation theory, the limitations of reader's response"in good translation"are explored by this dissertation.Through all these efforts, the dissertation makes a rather thorough interpretation of"good translation"from the angles of linguistics, reader's response thought and points out the innovations and limitations of"good translation"to offer reference for the establishing Chinese translatology.