A Literature Review on the Research and Development of Chinese and Western Re-translation

Abstract

Retranslation is one of the most important and controversial concepts in the history of translation. Although the definition of retranslation in different historical periods is different, more or less having a certain extended meaning reflecting the social and cultural background at that time, but the debates on “ancient and modern”, “accuracy and inaccuracy” and “literary and quality” produced by and around this phenomenon has promoted the further development of translation theories. With the frequent and increasingly diversified cultural exchanges brought about by economic globalization, the concept of “retranslation” has not only been eliminated by the times, but also has a new charm because of its characteristics of “overall problem-based research path” and “moving forward in a controversial pattern” (Gao, 2016a). As Gao Cun (2016a) said, “In the history of Chinese literary translation, the phenomenon of retranslation, which can be considered as the retranslation of the same literary works by different translators, is universal.” This paper is mainly divided into four parts, in which the body part is roughly classified in terms of chronological order, spatial order and different kind of viewpoints to present and discuss the various disputes and the development process and trend of retranslation.