A Study On Translation Of Defamiliarization In Su Tong's Works

Literary translation often distinguishes itself from non-literary translation for its unique characteristics.According to Russian Formalism,the nature of literature lies in literariness,which makes specific works become literary works.In order to realize literariness,writers often intentionally employ defamiliarization by violating everything people are accustomed to in daily life,thus increasing difficulties in understanding as well as prolonging aesthetic sensations and perceptions through creative deformation in content and form.Defamiliarization theory has been borrowed by scholars and applied to the field of translation,and there are currently two major study approaches: one views defamiliarization as a translation principle that can be flexibly used by translators who are not supposed to be absolutely subject to the source text considering the artfulness of literary works;the other observes defamiliarization as the target of translation,focusing on ways to deal with defamiliarized devices.And the thesis inclines to the latter.Su Tong,a representative avant-garde writer in modern Chinese literature,frequently employs defamiliarized devices in his fiction,specifically embodied on the lexical,syntactical,rhetorical and textual level,which brings uniqueness and freshness to readers.Existing translation studies on his works are mainly conducted from the perspectives of rewriting theory,relevance theory and translators' subjectivity,so there is still considerable room for exploring the translation of defamiliarization in his works.The thesis conducts a study on the reproductions and losses in rendering Su Tong's works into English.First,previous studies of defamiliarization in literary translation and the translation of Su Tong's books are briefly reviewed.Then a tentative definition is given to defamiliarization in literature studies,with various defamiliarized techniques being discussed.The main body consists of comparative analyses of the Chinese and English versions of Su Tong's two novels and three novellas from the four aspects mentioned above.In the conclusion part,it is pointed out that the majority of defamiliarized devices in the source text are basically reserved by Howard Goldblatt and Michael Duke.Some alienation effects are even creatively enhanced with adjusted word orders,replaced images and amplification.Meanwhile,a few defamiliarized expressions are omitted and weakened due to linguistic differences and translators' subjective choices.