Abstract: As a category of translation, literary translation has its own particularities in quality level. The translator’s comprehension taking the source language text as its base and his creation taking the target language text as its base bring the whole course of literary translation under the restriction of literary theory. As determined by the inherent characteristic of literary translation,by the relation between the translator and the text during translation and by the function of creativity,literary translation needs literary theory just the same.

Key words: translation, literary theory, literary translation