Motivations Of Literary Retranslation

On the basis of existing researches of motivations for retranslation,this thesis carries out a research exampled by Liu Zhongde's translation of Jane Austen' Emma,to summarize motivations of his retranslation.Retranslation means translating some work again.According to the most common classification method,the two types of retranslation are the retranslation of some literary work done by different translators and the retranslation done by the same translator.The research object of this thesis belongs to the latter type.Liu Zhongde's translation of Emma is quite a complex process: translation?revision?retranslation.His translation in 1949 is the first Chinese version of Emma,and later in the 1980 s,Liu revised his first translation;finally he retranslated Emma in 1993.And this research finds there are mainly three motivations of his retranslation of Emma:Firstly,the improvement of the translation theory and practice.With enriched translation practice and increasingly mature translation theories,Liu Zhongde wants to retranslate Emma and seeks improvement according to his mature theories.This is the most chief reason for his retranslation.For example,his new three-character principle,“faithfulness”,“expressiveness” and “closeness”,especially “closeness”,influences his retranslation.He retranslated improper translations where the words of characters in the dialogue fail to match his or her identity.In addition,although he did not intentionally apply any translation method at first,some sentences were over-literal translated,and led to not smooth expressions in the old translations;as his sense of translation methodsdeepens,he tends to use literal translation and free translation more flexibly in the retranslation.Secondly,the need to revise mistakes in the old version.During the first translation of Emma in 1949,the whole translation was published without final revision;during the revising process,Liu Zhongde just read the translation,without looking into the original text,besides,he asked a friend to help write down the revised translation.Liu Zhongde regards this “two regret things” in his translation life.Through reading and comparing the two old versions,he found there are mistakes and stuck to revise them through retranslation.This research finds that Liu did revise mistranslations and add missing translations.And the number of such revision is up to 67 in the first twenty chapters.Thirdly,others' comments on the old version.Others' comments has never been seen as a motivation of retranslation in existing researches,yet it is a noticeable factor that leads to Liu Zhongde's retranslation of Emma.Liu Zhongde affirms the close relationship between foreign literary translation and translation comments,and thinks the latter can purify and improve translation quality.In fact,many scholars have made comments relating to Liu's old translations of Emma.For example,Li Derong listed20 translation examples,except for the 4 affirmative examples,there are 9examples that influenced Liu Zhongde's retranslation.And as for the suggestions from Song Qi of better flexibly using dictionaries,Liu Zhongde retranslated improperly translated polysemous words.