Creative Treason In Pearl S. Buck’s English Translation Of Shui Hu Zhuan

As one of the Four Classic Novels, Shui Hu Zhuan achieves a great deal of praise and favorable reception with respect to the delicate diction and vivid recounting of Chinese customs and culture. The interesting story attracts readers deeply and the one hundred and eight impressive characters spread their fame generation by generation in China. Similar with the popularity in china, the English translations of Shui Hu Zhuan also gain reputation in the west, especially the four complete English versions. Among them, it is the English translation by Pearl S. Buck that firstly comes off the press and instantly tops the sale in America. Publication of the English translation of Shui Hu Zhuan earns her the award of the first one to introduce Shui Hu Zhuan to the west. Differentiating from the big success and hot sale in the west, her translation is severely criticized for Chinese cultural loss in translation by some Chinese scholars and what’s worse some even comment it as awkward mistranslation. Even now, there are a great number of controversial opinions concerning her translation.Traditional translation study tends to focus on the quality assessment of the translated text from the standard of functional equivalence or semantic communication. But since the1950s, translation practice has been identified as a cross-cultural communication activity and the former prescriptive translation model alters to the descriptive research. Consequently, critics shift their attention from the judgment of translation to the investigation of translating process. Translation study is not confined into the decoding and encoding between different language systems as well as translation regulations any more. Translation is recognized as the product of the translator and translation research implements on the acceptance of the product.Put forward by a French scholar, creative treason theory was born upon the background of cultural turn of translation study. It considers translation as the combination of treason and creation, maintaining that treason results from the source works being set in a completely distinct and unpredictable language system and the new spirit by the translator into the translation leads to creation. This thesis tends to investigate the English translation by Pearl S. Buck from the perspective of creative treason. Through the analysis of creative treason presented in her translation, the thesis strives to find out the reasons for it, including the probe of subjectivity of translator, manipulation of ideology, poetics and patronage.It is hoped that by analyzing Pearl’s translation with the creative treason theory, this thesis could be of some significance in appreciating Pearl’s translation aesthetics as well as broadening the horizon to investigate her personalized translation.