Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

1.1 Creative Treason in Literary Translation

    Creative treason as a theory was first put forward by French literary sociologist Robert Escarpit. He noted “Translation is always a sort of creative treason” (Wang 137). In 1999, Xie Tianzhen with a further evaluation of this newly emerged term wrote a book entitled Medio-Translatology to introduce Robert’s notion into China. In his book, he described the term “Creative Treason” as a common phenomenon in translation, which can be found in every translated work.  

    In Xie’s opinion, creative treason is neither a methodology nor a concrete way that can be applied in actual practice, but the essence of any translation. Both the words “creative” and “treason”, though being indispensable and integrated in the process of translation, represent two completely different parts of translators’ efforts. “Creation which is always the thumb of rule in translators minds stands for the efforts taken to approach the original work, while treason reflects the inevitable departure from the original work which is caused by the subjective goal of translators in the process of translation.” (Xie 137)  In other words, creative treason includes two contradictory aims of translator. One is to perfectly reproduce author’s idea which can be concluded as author-oriented translation. And the other is to recreate a more acceptable idea that can be easily understood by the reader. Thus translator’s subjective purpose can be fulfilled.

    Creative treason is totally different from the traditional translation theory held by many theorists. The famous English theorist Tytler introduced Three Translation Principles in which he says: Firstly, translation needs to rewrite the original work, making its author’s thought into full swing. Secondly, the style and manner of translated work should in accord with the original one. Thirdly, the translation should have all the ease of the original composition. (qtd. in Douglas 13:210 ) Under such traditional theories, translators are enslaved by the original work, and their creative ability is underestimated, because any omission or addition may go against these translation principles, and would be regarded as unfaithful even arbitrary actions. 

    However, creative treason not only admits the creation of translator, but also considers it as a normal phenomenon. It is thought the gap between the target language and the original language lead to the untranslatability of literary works. As a result, translators’ creativity to bridge the gap is urgently needed to make target readers fully understand what is intended in the words. What’s more, the acknowledgment of translators’ creativity and treason frees this group of people from previously bounded situation and makes it possible to detach a particular translator from the mass group, using it as an inpidual case to discover its personal style.

In this essay, the main efforts will be a detailed study of Hu Shi’s English poetry translation under the perspective of creative treason.

1.2 Background of Hu Shi and His Achievement

    Hu Shi (1891-1962) was an ideologist and educator in the Chinese modern history. He was enrolled in public school when he was fifteen. Then in 1910, he went to America and studied in Cornell University. After receiving the master degree, he went to Columbia University to further his study in philosophy during which he became a student of John Dewey, the founder of pragmatic theory. In 1917, he finished his course in America and went back to China. 

    During early 20th century, there appeared a new literary movement called the New Culture Movement. Before the New Culture Movement, most of English poems were translated into classic Chinese genre. As a result, most of Chinese civilians less well-educated were excluded from these literary works, since classic genre were unintelligible to them. In 1920, Hu Shi published his first poetry anthology, named The Book of Experiment. In this book, he managed to use vernacular language as the target language. Thus his work opened a new gate for most Chinese civilians to appreciate the beauty of poetry. And Hu Shi himself became the very advocator of New Culture Movement. He said: “There need to be an environment for vernacular literature to grow and the air for vernacular literature to breath.”(Hu 22)