Creative Treason In Literary Translation

With the development of the "cultural turn" in translation studies,Creative Treason,the product of the translator’s creativity and subjectivity,has received an increasing concern.Based on the Creative Treason Theory and taking the The Good Earth as an example,this paper attempts to explore how creative treason is applied in two translated versions,which helps people to have a thorough understanding of this theory.By a comparative study on the original text and two translated versions,the study finds that two translators are not completely faithful to the source text and there exists creative treason in two English versions.The creative treason is reflected in two translated versions in three aspects,i.e.vocabulary,sentence and style.The vocabulary aspect is illustrated from the perspective of religious words,animal words,terms of address and some other words.From these four aspects,the author takes some examples to analyze the creative treason in two translated versions of The Good Earth.And because of different ways of thinking between Chinese and Western,the syntax structures in two languages are quite different,so the translators need to deal with the original sentences in a flexible way in some cases.This reflects the Creative Treason in literary translation from the perspective of sentence.As for the style,the author explores how creative treason is reflected in two translated versions in the aspects of literary style and language expressions.And the main reasons for the translator’s creative treason are the influence of the internal factors and such external factors as social and historical environment.ideology,poetics,patrons and target readers.The study results have shown that the creative treason is one inevitable feature of literary translation.Faithfulness has some limitations and one can never be absolutely faithful in translating.In order to reproduce the original text to the largest extent,the translator needs to resort to creative treason.By this comparative study,the paper aims to probe into the creative treason in the target texts in the hope that it could provide some references for the theoretical study of the creative treason and further broaden the view of the translation study of The Good Earth.