The Complexity of Indirect Translation

Although indirect translation ( IT r) has always been commonly accepted and necessary, it is seldom discussed in translation studies. Issues such as the reasons for IT r, the visibility of IT r, the ways of mediating, the agents and other influential factors in IT r, and the its reception have suggested its complex nature, and thus determined that many facets of IT r remain to be studied. The present article will try to encompass the complexity of IT r by looking into the reasons for translating indirectly, the challenge of finding out mediating texts ( MT s), indirectness in both translation and interpretation, and the possible influences the two types of indirectness can bring to the translated images of a foreign literary work, as well as the validity of a prevailing and lasting hypothesis about IT r. In the course of the discussion, the IT r(s) in the Chinese translations of Andersen's tales, most of which have been translated and interpreted indirectly through major languages like English, will be employed as examples. Hopefully, this study will offer more insights into the nature of translation as a social activity and raise further interests in studying translation as a complex phenomenon.