THE POLITICS AND ETHICS OF LITERARY RETRANSLATION WITHIN WORLD LITERARY SYSTEM

The subject of literary retranslation has been widely dealt with in the field of translation studies in recent decade. The idea of "Retranslation Hypothesis" proposed by French scholar Antoine Berman has been adopted by researchers to investigate the linguistic, or more specifically, the stylistic features of literary retranslation. The models of retranslation have also been suggested by translation scholars for later translators, publishers and researchers. Yet the distinction between retranslation, reproduction and even plagiarized translations seems to be blurred in this age. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the complicated issues involved in the activities of literary retranslation within world literary system, and examine to what extent the social, cultural, ideological factors have facilitated or constrained the qualities of literary retranslation. It will further address the ethical issues of retranslation which is complicated by the Western concept of property rights. Cases of retranslating classic literary texts from Chinese to English and English to Chinese will be presented to gauge the position and values of literary retranslation in the field of world literature.