Explicitation Of Translation And Translation Ethics

Oscar Wilde, a writer, dramatist, and poet in Victorian Period in NineteenthCentury, is a representative figure of aestheticism. Although he is famous for being anadult writer, both his career as a writer and the formation of his writing style originatesfrom fairy tales. The Fisherman and His Soul, popular around the world with its vividscene, aesthetic image, is an outstanding piece of his fairy tales, which has beentranslated into many Chinese versions. In this thesis, I take Ba Jin’s translation and XieYujie’s, which are the longest ones available in time span, for analysis from theperspective of translation ethics in order to deepen the study of the Chinese translations.It’s Shoshana Blum-Kulka who put forward the explicitation hypothesis for thefirst time. She argues that a successful translation necessitates a complex processing oftext and discourse. She says:“The process of interpretation performed by the translatoron the source text might lead to a TL text which is more redundant than the SL text.This redundancy can be expressed by a rise in the level of cohesive explicitation in theTL text.”(Blum-Kulka,2000) However, Seguinot argues that this definition is toonarrow. Explicitation takes place not only when “something is expressed in thetranslation, which was not in the original”, but also in cases where “something whichwas implied or understood through presupposition in the source text is overtlyexpressed in the translation, or an element in the source text is given a greaterimportance in the translation through focus, emphasis, or lexical choice. By contrast,“explicitation” put forward by Blum-Kulka is exclusively referred to the change ofcoherence. In this thesis, the author applies the broader definition of explicitation, i.e.explicitation happens where the translation turns to be a more explicit, concrete,understandable text than the original, which resembles Seguinot’s definition of it.As to translation ethics, Finnish scholar Andrew Chesterman(2001) has proposedfive models of it: ethics of presentation, ethics of service, ethics of communication,norm-based ethics and ethics of commitment. Ethics of representation goes back to theideal of the faithful interpreter, and to the translation of sacred text. In this situation，theethical imperative is to represent the source text，or the original author’s intentionaccurately，without adding，omitting or changing anything. Ethics of service is based onthe concept of translation as a commercial service, performed for a client or clients.Ethics of communication emphasizes how to communicate with others across linguisticor cultural boundaries. Norm-based ethics and ethics of commitment value the importance of trust--if translators behave in a predictable, norm-conforming way, forwhich it is easier to trust them and their profession as a whole.The research object in this thesis is the translation of Wilde’s The Fisherman andHis Soul. There are six Chinese translations of it. Mumu Tian is the first one to translateit into Chinese in1947. However, his translation is scarcely available to this research.After that comes Ba Jin’s Kuaile Wangzi Ji in1948, which has been reedited andreprinted for many times. Following it, in2000, Wangerde Quanji was published byChinese Literature Press. Six years later, Wang Lin’s translation, published by YilinPress, comes into market. In2009, Wushu Zhi’s adapts Wilde’s fairy tales, includingThe Fisherman and His Soul. The latest one is Xie Yujie’s by Chinese Juvenile andChildren’s Publishing House in May,2010. It’s the longest time span between Ba Jin’stranslation and Xie Yujie’s among those available to us. These two translation versionsare produced in considerably different times, which, in reverse, will be reflectedlinguistically. The usage of one linguistic choice over another is, in fact, related to thetranslation ethics in some degree. The author believes that the investigation into Ba Jin’stranslation and Xie’s will offer us some inspiration.This study shows that Ba Jin’s translation, an earlier translation version of Wilde’sfairy tales, is more loyal to the SL text. It’s less explicit, which is attempted to representthe wholeness of source text by using various strategies in syntactic structures, therhetoric, linguistic markers and tones, all of which embodies the ethics of representation.In order to keep loyal to the SL text, Ba Jin’s translation is inevitably foreignized.Distinct differences between Chinese and English yield a translation with sentences lesscomplete and continuous, which although are understandable, however, showing lessconcern in children’s interests. By contrast, Xie Yujie adapts Wilde’s original text insome degree, attempting to gain more child interests. After a thorough contrastiveanalysis in this research, I find that Xie Yujie’s translation is more explicit than Ba Jin’swith an addition of some explicit reading-experience-enhancing expressions, throughthe rearrangement of the sentence structure, the choice of certain words and the use ofmarked language, all of which will inevitably make the sentence more complete.Furthermore, the narration of Xie Yujie’s translation is more vivid with more genuinefeelings, representing the ethics of service and the norm-based ethics, which servesbetter to its target readers—children in China.