Treason In Translation From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

Translation is a hot topic at all times and in all countries and there are various translation schools in translation circles, however the cultural school is the focus of this thesis. Representatives of the cultural school are James Holmes, Tama Evan Zohar, Gideon Toury, Andre Lefevere and Susan Bassnett. Lefevere and Bassnett advocated that translation studies should return to cultural aspect and be brought into the field of cultural construction. The theoretical guidance of this thesis is the rewriting theory proposed by Andre Lefevere, also known as the manipulation theory. The theory holds that translation not only focuses on thelanguage level, but also emphasizes the rewriting process of cultural level of the original text.Rewriting is mainly limited by internal and external constraints. Internal factors of the literary system refer to professionalscomposed of the critics, teachers and translators; while the external onesrefer to the people and organizations that have the power to promote and restrain the literary creation and translation, namely the sponsors, who are most interested in the literary ideology. Literary translation is a rewriting process and therefore it will inevitably affect the faithfulness to the original text. This paper first acknowledges and confirmsthe objective existing of treason in translationand treason is not infidelity of the original text, however, it could be the intentional and conscious choice of the translator. what is the purpose of the translator's intentional treason? what effect does the translator want to achieve by intentional treason? These points will be the focus of this paper. By referring to previous studies, this paper will classify the treason in translationand discuss this mainly from the expedient and strategic treason.Predecessors of this field mainly focused on creative treason and few people systematically classified treason in detail. Based on this research, the reason of treason can be explained by the two elements of rewriting theory, namely the ideology and patronage.Besides, by a thorough comparison of the original text of Godfather, written by American writer Mario Puzo, and two Chinese versions, the thesis finds the presence of typical treasonous phenomenon in two versions and traces the reasons of it according to Lefevere's rewriting theory, for the effect of translation conveyed to target culture readers.Based on Lefevere's rewriting theory, chapter one proposes the research background and research purpose, using qualitative research methods combined with a lot of examples to illustrate the significance of this study and demonstrate the main point of view: translation is rewritingand rewriting will inevitably lead to treason. Chapter two demonstratesthe research status of Lefevere's rewriting theory at home and abroad,especially the ideology and patronage, the original text and the author of it,itstranslation status and treason in translation. Chapter three lists the form and selects the most typical examples of the original text and the two Chinese versions, moreover,abundant examples are demonstrated from three aspects:translation of jargon;translation of appellation and name of things; translation of sex description.Chapter fourmakes a conclusion about the main idea of this thesis and summarizes the intention and reason of translator's expedient and strategic treason. In the end, it puts forward several common presence of treason: personalized translation, intentional mistranslation, omission, abridged brief translation, compilation, conversion and adaptation.