Research On Information Distortion In C-E Translation:from The Perspective Of Information Theory

Translation is a cross-cultural human communication activity with a long history, which is also a message transmission process. Although the faithfulness and equivalence have long been the research focus of translation, the untranslatability has also caught attention of some scholars. It will inevitably produce message distortion and thus exert negative influence on accuracy of message delivered in translation process. Currently, scholars have done some researches on this issue. However, their studies are relatively scattered and uneven failing to provide a systematic and insightful view.XiYouJi is one of the four greatest classics of China. The book, backgrounded in myth, describes the politics, religion, culture and people’s life of ancient feudal society. It possesses a strong flavor of religion including Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism and distinctive features of Chinese society. Although the book is a novel in itself, it mingles organically with other styles such as poem and storytelling. Therefore, translating such a literature masterpiece involves handling various untranslatable problems. Rooted in entirely different cultures, Chinese and English respectively belongs to different language families. The huge differences between them make C-E translation more difficult to deal with. Therefore, the English versions of XiYouJi are naturally typical subjects to investigate message distortion in translation.Information theory is a mature science focusing on information processing and transmission. The core target of it is to reproduce the content at the destination transmitted by the transmitter and accomplish the information transmission task. Strictly speaking, translation is also an information transmission system. The target of it is to deliver the message SL author encodes in SL text to TL reader and to realize the communication between the former and the latter. Therefore, information theory is able to provide guidance for translation activities.Hence, the present study conducts a systematic and comprehensive research on message distortion in translation process with two English versions of XiYouJi as case under the guidance of information theory. It first reveals the message flow and message amount variance during translation process based on the general communication system and then analyzes the factors affecting the reliability and accuracy of message delivered in translation system. After that, two standards that translators should comply with are put forward to guarantee the reliability and accuracy of message delivered in translation. In addition, it theoretically classifies the distortion content in translation into four types, i.e. the concepts language codes carry, sound message, image message and such messages as rhythm, rhyme and style some specific code patterns carry. Afterwards, the distortion content, its causes, and translation skills and compensating skills are discussed comprehensively combining with two English versions of XiYovJi based on the above-mentioned theoretical investigations. This thesis selects typical examples in XiYouJi as cases, which are grouped into four categories according to message types example codes carry to investigate message distortion in its two English versions.It is found that all four types of message distortion mentioned above occur in actual translation practice as shown by the analysis of two English versions of XiYouJi; and the causes of distortion mainly consist of culture differences, language differences, translator’s ability/preference, the unverifiablity of SL content and message types/amount codes carry; based on these findings, the present study further puts forward translation skills and some compensating skills translators can comply with during translation activities to guarantee the accurate message delivery during translation process.These findings give a full view of message distortion content in translation and reveal various reasons for causing such distortion, which to some extent provides a framework for future researchers to carry out studies on message distortion in translation. And the corresponding translation skills and compensating skills drawn from the analysis in this thesis will help translators in their practice to deliver message as accurately as possible.