An Analysis Of "Deceptive Equivalence" In Translation From The Perspective Of Literary Stylistics

Literary stylistics is defined as a discipline mediating between literary criticism and linguistics forms with the purpose of illustrating how the writer's verbal choices contribute to the literary significance of the entire work.“Deceptive equivalence” establishes equivalence at the level of “paraphrasable material content” without considering thematic function and aesthetic value.As a result,the Target Text and Source Text express the same idea,but produce the different literary aesthetic value.This thesis,based on Shen Dan's theories about “deceptive equivalence” in fiction translation,attempts to analyze the English versions of A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Yang Xianyi and Hawkes from the perspective of literary stylistics.It attempts to answer the following two research questions: 1.Does “deceptive equivalence” exist in English versions of the novel A Dream of Red Mansions? 2.If it does,what are the forms and causes for this phenomenon? How can it be identified and avoided?The research finds that as a common phenomenon in fictional translation,“deceptive equivalence” also exists in Yang's version and Hawkes' version and is mainly manifested in three aspects including lexical expression,syntax,and speech and thought presentation.The translator alters fictional reality due to emotional involvement in lexical expressions or fails to reproduce literary and aesthetic functions generated by certain syntactic choice and speech and thought presentation,which possibly leads to “deceptive equivalence”.Therefore,the translator fails to achieve a vivid description of psychological activity depicted in the text and then,the thematic meaning and aesthetic value will not be fully developed.With its precision and objectivity,the application of literary stylistics to fiction translation studies will help to ward off the general and impressionistic comments and intuitive analysis and give the translators a more systematic and scientific picture of the original discourse.The research finds that literary stylistics can effectively help to identify,reduce and avoid the occurrence of “deceptive equivalence” in fictional translation.