On Creative Misreading In Literary Translation

Misreading has existed for a long time, but always been ignored. Because of logocentrism which mastered people’s mind, people always tried to grasp the original meaning of texts, and misreading was regarded as incorrect reading. During the20th century, with the development of deconstruction, people gradually changed their mind. The forerunner of deconstruction Roland Bathes’essay "Death of the Author" first deconstructed the empire of authors and encouraged the freedom of readers’ interpretation. Then French philosopher Derrida advanced his concept of differance. That is "all signs are deferred diachronically and differed synchronically"(qtd. in Gentzler,2004:158). So it’s impossible to capture their original meaning. Then the so called correct reading is impossible and all reading is misreading.Influenced by Derrida’s theory, four literature critics of Yale University developed misreading theory. Among them, Harold Bloom is a special scholar. He is the first person who put forward the concept of "misreading". Strictly speaking, he is not a deconstructionist. Compared with the other three Yale scholars, he laid particular stress on the role of "human beings" in reading and developed his unique theory of misreading. He suggests that misreading is a strategy of resistance, a strategy which is applied by strong poets to fight against their forerunners. Strong poets intentionally misread their forerunners to fight for living space. Bloom’s theory is hailed as the most brilliant and creative literary theory in the past20years.Another school that made construction to misreading study is modern hermeneutics. Its representative Hans Gadamer critically inherited his forerunner Heidegger’s idea and put forward some key concepts of modern hermeneutics—historicity of understanding, prejudice and fusion of horizon which laid foundation for rationalization of misreading.Development in Philosophy and literature criticism pushed forward the improvement of translation study. Translation scholars attached more and more attention to misreading and its significance. Some scholars made deep study of misreading, analyzing its reason, manifestation and significance from perspectives of deconstruction and modern hermeneutics.The focus of this thesis is creative misreading in literary works. Different from most scholars who define creative misreading as conscious misreading, this thesis tries to make a new definition of it, which is defined in terms of their effects, not causes. No matter conscious or unconscious misreading, as long as they could produce positive effects, they could be regarded as creative and could be defined as creative misreading. This thesis analyzes the manifestation, formation mechanism and significance of creative misreading, and develops creative misreading as a translation strategy. In addition, the author makes suggestion on how to apply this strategy in translation.In introduction, this thesis reviews the history of misreading study, makes a brief introduction of the evolution of misreading theory.The first chapter introduces the concept of misreading and its categorization, and makes a new definition of creative misreading.The second chapter is the theoretical analysis of this thesis. In this part, the author analyzes creative misreading from perspectives of deconstruction and modern hermeneutics, focuses on the introduction of Harold Bloom’s theory and its connection with translation study.In the third chapter, the causes of creative misreading are discussed. The author analyzes the factors that influence creative misreading with examples.The fourth chapter is about the significance of creative misreading. In terms of whether it’s conscious or unconscious, the positive influence of creative misreading is discussed in two aspects. On the basis of this part, the author suggests that creative misreading could be used as a translation strategy and discusses the application of this strategy in translation with examples, like abridged and supplementary translation.The last part is the conclusion of the thesis. In this part, the author concludes the general contents of the previous chapters and restates the focus of this thesis.