This essay analyzes literature translation in the view of writing, aiming at how to translate idiomatically in order to produce an excellent translation。

2。 Literature Review

“The fundamental components of translation studies include translation theory, translation history and translation criticism。”(Cao 190) Among three subjects, translation theory is a logical research of translation activity itself and development of it; translation history studies translation activity from the perspective of history; translation criticism studies translation actions, versions and translators。

In the view of the development of translation theory, it experiences several stages, such as linguistics, philosophy, stylistics, aesthetics and so on。 Besides cognitive function, its essential function of guiding translation practice is also important。 “In essence, translation has a strong practicality rather than being non-theoretical。”(Wang 37) 

Someone argues that a person who has a good command of two or more language can do translation。 However, there is still a factor for whether translation is good or not, that is the translator’s writing ability。 Actually, translation is a kind of writing and recreation。  Throughout ages, there was a large number of excellent translations springing up because of translators’ wonderful writing ability。 What’s more, many giants discuss writing in translation。 Si Guo once said “ translation is actually rewriting。”（Si 1) He thought that one without excellent writing skills had better not learn translation。 Yu Guangzhong said “Translation is a kind of creation, which is finite。”(Yu 40) Wang Danyang also involves the creation in literary translation in her book Creation In Literary Translation。 Wang Ning thought, “Translation is the reproducibility of writing。”(Wang 11) Delisle, a French scholar of interpretive translation theory, declares that translation is an art of re-expression based on writing techniques, which coincides with the theory of translational writing。 But the lack of these studies is that there is no systematic knowledge of translational writing。 

Since writing and translation have something in common, Yang Shizhuo, a prominent scholar of English Department of School of Foreign Language and Literature in Xiamen University, put forward translational writing。 Professor Yang holds that the basic theory of translational writing has several distinctions as follows。 First, it reveals the basic rules of translational writing。 Second, it explains the interactions of perception, thought operation, expression and reviewing that are core system in translational writing。 Third, translational writing pays high attention to translator’s bilingual ability, especially his or her native language。 Finally, translational writing is a foundation course with strong synthesis and practice which emphasizes on translation practice, translation skills and comparison of different versions。

3。 Writing Versus Translation

As for writing, there are lots of definitions from different points of view in varieties of books, dictionaries。 So far, there has been still no acceptable unified definition。 Among the numerous definitions, two definitions are fairly complete。 One is “Writing is an advanced mental labor, and it is an activity in which the writer uses the organized words to reflect the subject world and express thoughts and feelings。”(Xia 1) The other is “The so-called writing is a kind of mental labor in which people create works by verbal sign。” (Zhu 9)来*自~优|尔^论:文+网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766*

 Translation is defined by many masters。 In his book A Course in English-Chinese Translation, Zhang Peiji defined translation like this: “Translation is a language activity in which one kind of language re-expresses accurately and completely what another language would like to express。” (Zhang 1)Some western giants in the field of translation also have their own opinions on translation。 Eugene A。 Nida, a famous linguist and translator in America, thinks that translation is to decode and to recode。 According to his explanation, three procedures are included。 First, from the perspective of grammar and semantics, the translator should analyze surface structure and information of the original text。 Second, the translator needs to translate the information analyzed before from source language to target language in his mind。 Finally, the translator has to reorganize the information, making it meets the requirement of target language(Nida 484)。 Similarly, Basil Hatim, a British translation theorist, classified different kinds of problems that translators would meet in translation into three items。 The understanding of source language, the transfer of meanings and the evaluation of target language(Hatim 20)。