Norm And Creative Treason: A Contrastive Study On Three Chinese Translations Of A Tale Of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities is a masterpiece of Charles Dickens, one of the most outstanding representatives of British Realism Literature in 19th Century. In this research, seventeen full-text Chinese translations are collected (not including the translations for children literature, English language teaching, and those translations from abridged source texts, simplified editions and re-compilations, etc.). A corpus of these translations has been established. According to the division of modern and contemporary Chinese translation history, translations of this novel can be divided into four periods. Assisted by the corpus software, this research first reconstructs and describes the translational norms of these translations in 1980s and 1990s. Then taking the norms reconstructed as criteria, the author focuses the study on the translational behaviors of the creative treason in three representative translations by Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang, Song Zhaolin and Yao Jirong, and Sun Fali.This research aims to answer the following two research questions. 1) What are the translational norms of the Chinese translations of A Tale of Two Cities during 1980s and 1990s? 2) How is the creative treason reflected in the three Chinese translations of A Tale of Two Cities by Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang, Song Zhaolin and Yao Jirong, and Sun Fali?The major findings include:Firstly, the translational norms of the Chinese translations of A Tale of Two Cities during 1980s and 1990s are closest to the linguistic norms of the target text, compared with the previous two periods. At lexical level, the lexical diversity in this period is the largest, which represents the language of translation in this period is rich and colourful. The ratio of function words in this period is the lowest, while the ratio of content words is the highest. The information load of the sentences in this period is also the highest. At syntactic level, translators in this period incline to use shorter and more concise sentences in accordance with the target language linguistic norms, and use the least number of modifiers of attributives and the capacity of compound attributives. The average types of connectives in this period are rich, and the diversity of them is the highest. In short, translations in this period tend to be paratactic and show a return tendency to the linguistic norms of target language.Secondly, against the translational norms in the same historical period, the creative treason of the translators of three famous translations is studied from the perspectives of language and culture. Each translator tries to understand the text according to his own understanding and uses his own language to reproduce the original meaning. Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang's translation is characterized by their remarkable creative treason. From the point of language use, their expressions are very different from the other two versions. In order to create a strong effect of the expression, they use the negation translation method and also adopt poetic form to translate idiomatic phrases. In terms of the linguistic forms, however, it mainly obeys the original. In addition, this translation keeps the original culture in the cultural translation. The most outstanding translational feature in this translation is its communicative translation by using creative treason. Its translators try their best to show the meaning of the original text. They use more vivid language to describe and to render the exact contextual meaning.In Song Zhaolin and Yao Jirong's translation, we can also find the subjectivity of translators. They manage to express the original meanings. At the same time, they add their own understanding to translate the extended meaning. In linguistic forms, they give up the original form of the letter and use the letter form, which are used by Chinese readers. To emphasize the tragic experience of the character in the novel, they creatively add an adverbial to strengthen the mood when they translate a passive sentence. They aim to introduce different custom to readers and hold the purpose to make readers identify with the writer.Compared with the previous two translations, there is also a lot of creative treason in Sun Fali's translation. At lexical level, he uses many outdated expressions. Sometimes he makes great creative treason against the linguistic form of the original, although some treason loses the original meaning. Sometimes he reduces the reading burden for Chinese readers by using different translation strategies. One of the successful creative treason in his version is the translation of an English proverb"When you go to Rome, do as Rome does". He creates a completely new image by using another popular Chinese proverb. He tries to balance between the original meanings and the acceptability of readers, thus, making his translation filled with creative treason to both the source language norms and the target language norms.On the basis of the previous analysis and discussion, the two research questions have been answered. This research describes the norms and creative treason by studying the three Chinese translations of A Tale of Two Cities. It reveals the common translational characters reflected in the translation process of the translators, that is, translational norms. However translations do not simply follow the translational norms. Based on the different fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception of translators, distinctive translations have been produced. The research also reveals the creative treason of translators. In fact, in translations, the coexistence of translational norms and translator's creative treason can be found.