The pursuit of pure language : a case study on Liu Cixin’s The Wandering Earth

Abstract

The present study aims to examine different modes of intention intralinguistically within the theoretical framework of Walter Benjamin’s translation theories illustrated in his article The Task of Translator. The research is based on a case study of Liu Cixin’s novelette The Wandering Earth by back-translating independently the English version by Ken Liu and conducting a comparative study among the original, the English, and the back-translated versions of the novelette. Perspectives of the analyses include the aesthetics in terms of death, tragedy, space, sublimity, and narration. The findings are the stylistic features of them are different from each other and the back-translation is more elaborate than the original. It can be concluded that modes of intention have been enlarged through translation and back-translation, and translation as Walter Benjamin claimed, magnifies the original work.