On Science Fiction Translation Guided By Guo Jianzhong's Related Theories

Science fiction is a comparatively new popular literary genre. It depicts human life in the future or on another planet through the way of fantasy based on scientific facts. Originating from the Industrial Revolution, science fiction has been developing steadily and becomes a part of mainstream literature in the West. By contrast, Chinese science fiction appeared much later and also remains to be further developed. For the reason that China has a large number of readers, more and more excellent foreign science fiction should be translated into Chinese. On one hand, Chinese readers may get more chance to choose science fiction works. On the other hand, the positive functions of science fiction can be achieved. In the long run, the translation of foreign ones can boom the domestic market of science fiction and promote the development of Chinese own science fiction. The American author Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312(2012) is generally acknowledged to be a masterpiece. This novel has marvelous plots and involves some themes that set people thinking. If there is a Chinese vision of 2312, domestic readers will be offered with a great opportunity to enjoy the charm of this excellent science fiction work.In order to make a comprehensive research on science fiction translation, the author of this thesis has collected a large amount of related materials and got a clear understanding of its context and writing tradition. As for the science fiction translation practices and theories, China has made some achievements, to which Guo Jianzhong has contributed a lot. He won the ?Karel Capek Prize? by the World Science Fiction Association in 1991 and became the only person in China to receive this honor so far; in 1997, he achieved the ?Golden Bridge Award? by Chinese International Science Fiction Association. Guo has translated many famous science fiction works, and published many books about translation theories on science fiction. His Studies of Sci-tech Translation: Theories, Strategies and Practices(2004) is the first and the only monograph to discuss science fiction translation practices and theories in a systematic way, in which translation criteria, translators' qualities and translation strategies are explained with specific cases and exert a great influence on science fiction translation. To be specific, science fiction has the criteria of literariness, popularity and scientificness, so the translator should possess the professional knowledge of English literature, free imagination and extensive knowledge about science. In the process of translation, the translator can adopt some strategies from the word, sentence and paragraph levels. In terms of word translation, the translator should consider the conceptual meaning, contextual meaning, collocative meaning and cultural meaning; for sentence translation, some strategies, such as changing word order, splitting sentences and combining sentences, can be chosen by the translator; as for paragraph translation, repetition, ellipsis and conjunction are main strategies to achieve the reorganization of paragraphs. This thesis makes an attempt to translate Stanley Robinson's 2312 under the guidance of Guo's these related theories on science fiction translation to provide a reference and an example for the translation of more science fiction works.