A Study Of C-E Translation Of Death’s End Based On Chesterman’s Models Of Translation Ethics

Death’s End is another science fiction masterpiece written by Liu Cixin,an outstanding contemporary Chinese science fiction writer,after The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest.Its English version translated by Ken Liu was greeted with considerable popular acclamation upon publication,and won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017,which is generally reckoned another undoubted success of Chinese science fiction works going to the world.Since the “cultural turn”,translation ethics,again,after a quiet silence,has become one of the important tendencies of translation studies in the West.And the research focus of translation scholars diverted to the study of relationship between ethics of different cultures and translation,and the role of translator ethics in translation activities accordingly.Based on the study of values,Chesterman proposes his famous five models of translation ethics: Representation,Service,Communication,Norm-based and Commitment.Among them,the ethics of representation emphasizes that translators should represent the original text,the original author’s intention and the culture source text represents;the ethics of service stresses that translators should meet the reading needs of target readers so as to provide better service;the ethics of communication holds that translators,as disseminators and promoters in cross-cultural communication,should give full play to their subjectivity;the norm-based ethics goes that translators should measure up the expectations of target readers in conformity to the professional norms;the ethics of commitment reckons that translators should upholds basic professional qualities and ethical requirements,being responsible for both the translation profession and all parties involved in translation activities.From the perspective of Chesterman’s ethics models of translation,the thesis applies method of comparative study in analyzing the translation methods and strategies of the translation of Death’s End for the exploration of the translator’s behavior and ethical problems in the translation activity,that is,how does the translator achieve the goal of cultural communication by exerting his subjectivity?The conclusion is that in the translation process of Death’s End,Ken Liu strikes a good balance between the author,translator and target reader as well as the source text and the target text by employing proper translation strategies and methods,accomplishing satisfactory cultural communication and embodying the ethical responsibility,which concurrently satisfies the reading expectation of the receptors and represents the source text to the greatest extent: 1.The accomplishment of representation ethics.Being faithful to the original text,the translator represents the content of the original text,the author’s intention and the culture of source language through foreignization and adoption of transliteration,zero translation and literal translation methods;2.The accomplishment of service ethics.Being loyal to the users of the translation,the translator ensures the smoothness and readability of the version through domestication and employment of the paraphrase,idiomatic translation and shift;3.The accomplishment of communication ethics.For better intercultural communication,the translator alternatively applies foreignization and domestication in different contexts and uses substitution,hijacking and rewriting,which is the proof that he gives full play to translator’s subjectivity;4.The accomplishment of norm-based ethics.The translator meets the reading expectations of target readers by adopting addition,omission and annotation,representing his sense of responsibility,which is in line with expectancy and professional norms;5.The accomplishment of commitment ethics.The translator shows his excellent professional competence and respect to the translation profession by rearranging and splitting the original paragraphs,which is in conformity to professional ethics.