The Makings Of A Translator And The C-E Translation Of The Science Fiction Death's End

The makings of a translator are the combination of a translator's competence and quality.It is mainly embodied in the translator's subjectivity,flexibility and creativity in the construction of translation according to the translation context and purpose.Different types of text have different requirements to the makings of a translator.So far,researches about the makings of a translator are relatively general and researches related to the makings of a translator in science fiction are rarely found.Professor Guo Jianzhong holds that the translation of science fiction should be featured with literariness,scientificity and popularity,which decides that science fiction translators should equip themselves with literary accomplishments,scientific literacy and reader consciousness.Death's End,the third volume of The Three-Body Trilogy,has achieved a huge success abroad and pushed the Chinese science fiction to the world level.This largely attributes to Liu's translation.According to the translation criterion of science fiction put forward by Professor Guo,this thesis attempts to analyze the relationship between the makings of a translator and the reproduction of the features of science fiction in the English version of Death's End from the aspects of literary accomplishments,scientific literacy and reader consciousness.The thesis is divided into four chapters.The first chapter examines the formation and development of the concept of the making of a translator and further puts forward the formation of the makings of a translator in science fiction translation.The second chapter,concerned with how Ken Liu's literary accomplishments help him to reproduce the literariness of Death s End,discusses the way Ken Liu deals with the rhetorical devices with literary aesthetic ability on the one hand and the way he translates Chinese idioms with his literary comprehension and expressive ability on the other.It points out that Ken Liu's literary aesthetic ability helps him to reproduce the rhetorical effects and aesthetics of the original text and he has completely comprehended and transmitted the meaning of Chinese idioms as well as created the defamiliarization effect.The third chapter focuses on how the translator remains the scientificity of Death 's End by virtue of his scientific literacy,emphasizes the importance of translator's scientific imagination in translating science fiction neologisms and declares that translator's scientific logical thinking and knowledge in science are of great significance to the translation of scientific phenomena.It holds that Ken Liu has conveyed the meaning of neologisms accurately by reasonable imagination and reproduced scientific phenomena vividly by rearranging the scientific logic order.The fourth chapter probes into how the translator represents the popularity of Death's End with reader consciousness.Having taken the target reader's gender value orientation into account,Ken Liu has effectively enhanced the acceptability of Death's End by rewriting and omission.With the consideration of the target reader's background knowledge,Ken Liu has diminished the reading obstacle by amplification to make up the missing background and by literal translation with footnotes to explain the culture-loaded words.From the analysis above,it can be concluded that science fiction,as a special genre of literature,has special requirements for the makings of a translator different from those of other genres of text.Excellent science fiction translators need to equip themselves with good literary accomplishments,scientific literacy and reader consciousness,which can not only contribute to the reproduction of the features of science fiction and but also bring the science fictions with Chinese characteristics into the world stage.It is hoped that this thesis will provide a keen insight into researches about the makings of a translator in other genres of text and enrich the related studies of science fiction translation.