Text Analysis of Different Translated Versions

Nowadays, the literary translation in Taiwan seems to be in a dilemma. According to Professor Peng's observation, there are serious problems hidden behind the booming development of the market of translation. The first one is "the lack of long-term project." The second one is "the overemphasis of the market value of current time." The third one is "the need of significant criticism and comment of translation." This study focuses mainly on the third problem "the criticism and comment of translation" and aims at conducting a text analysis of literary work in different translated versions, taking Virginia Woolf's short story "The Mark on the Wall" as an example. This short story is a chapter of Selected Short Stories (Penguin Classics, 2000). With the integration of relevant books on principles of literary translation, four strategies for text analysis are established as a framework for the present study: Faithfulness, Format, Readability, and Style. According to the four strategies, the researcher compared the differences among the three translated texts in Chinese and did a qualitative analysis to decide which one is best translated.