Eco-environment-based Study Of Fidelity In Creative Treason

Creative treason has attracted a lot of attention since Robert Escarpit first adopted this term in 1961. In the study on the relationship between creative treason and fidelity, creative treason, from being treasonous to a way to reach fidelity, its positive effect has been gradually acknowledged. Yet, it has not completely cast off the orientation as treason. Theoretically based on the eco-environment of translation, this thesis tries to prove that creative treason is fake treason but true fidelity. It can help translated versions to represent the deep structures of the original, which are derived from specific eco-environment of translation other than the original work itself, such as the communicative, social and cultural information, including translators'subjectivity, social ideology, cultural differences, and the change of space and time, etc.. Creative treason and traditional fidelity criterion that mainly focuses on the transfer of the original work itself, which we view as Deep Fidelity and Surface Fidelity respectively, are the two elements establishing a revised new translation fidelity criterion.The thesis first introduces the eco-environment of translation as the background and then reviews the concept of creative treason and analyzes its traits, types and range.Next this thesis puts forward the concepts of Surface Fidelity and Deep Fidelity. By reviewing the Chinese and western related documents, it points out that though there are many expressions of traditional fidelity criterion, they share the same principle by emphasizing the transfer of the original work itself, that is, the linguistic form, contents, style and even the artistic features of the original work, so in this thesis, traditional fidelity is regarded as surface fidelity criterion with its translation as surface translation. After analysis, this thesis points out that the status of traditional fidelity criterion suffers challenges from creative treason, which is followed by the review of the relationship study between fidelity and creative treason. Then this thesis tries to prove the deep fidelity of creative treason from three aspects:translation subjects, cultural exchange and transmission, and the development of translation itself. Here, this thesis poses the idea of a new fidelity criterion, that is, a unit of surface fidelity criterion and deep fidelity criterion. The former refers to the traditional fidelity criterion while the latter refers to creative treason. In the end, this thesis tries to probe into the dynamic balance of surface and deep fidelity criteria in different texts of written translation, including original-oriented translation texts of science and technology, texts with prominent translators'subjectivity of literature translation, and texts focusing on target readers from advertisement translation, tourist translation, and subtitle translation.As a result of the discussions above, this thesis (1) proves the nature of creative treason as fake treason but true fidelity, which makes it possible for translators to exert their subjectivity and make different translated texts to meet the need of different readers, and thus can offer much more materials for translation studies; (2) puts forward a new fidelity criterion consisting of two aspects—the traditional fidelity criterion regarded as Surface Fidelity Criterion, and creative treason as Deep Fidelity Criterion; (3) defines the surface and deep structures of the original work. The former is the original work itself which is the focal point of traditional fidelity criterion and its translation is a kind of surface translation, while the latter refers to all the contents other than the original work itself which are endowed by the eco-environment of translation with their translation as deep translation.