Translation and Literary Criticism: Regarding Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism for Rendition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Abstract

The task of translation is not simply about rendering individual words or sentences, but rather entire texts have to be rendered in order to faithfully represent the whole meaning and any aspect of the original work in another language. To that end, the translator should delve into the innermost layers of works and appreciate the details that might be a help in rendition of texts and reflect literary and philosophical aspects of works in another language. In doing so, the paper suggests that literary criticism as a means might assist translators in rendition of works of literature. Since, the domain of literary criticism is massive, the discussion is narrowed down to psychoanalytic literary criticism and the way the criticism elucidates some aspects of works. Meanwhile, to show the practicability of the discussion, the criticism is applied to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , and then three aspects attained by the criticism are elaborated in rendition of this story.