A Comparative Study Of The Translations Of Romeo And Juliet By Zhu Shenghao And Fang Ping

Translation studies in China were formerly confined to linguistic aspects, such as equivalence, faithfulness, form and content, literal translation and free translation. However, great changes have taken place since the 1980s with the introduction of cultural turn in translation studies, which brought new dimensions far beyond the traditional scope, such as skopos theory, manipulation theory, feminist translation theory, postcolonial translation and so on.Andre Lefevere (Lefevere,2004), a prominent representative of manipulation school, proposes the manipulation theory and claims that literary translation is not only affected by the internal factors of the source text itself, but also manipulated by the ideology, poetics and patronage outside the text. The translator usually makes some necessary adjustment to the source text for the consideration of dominant ideology and poetics in the target culture so that the translation could be circulated to the largest extent, achieving the desired purpose.The thesis applies Lefevere's manipulation theory to the English-Chinese translations of Romeo and Juliet by Zhu Shenghao and Fang Ping in different historical periods. It analyzes ideological motivation and manipulation of text under the category of ideology, the translation genre and translation strategy under the category of poetics. It also discusses the patronage in terms of economic support, safety support and publication support.The thesis attempts to reach such a conclusion that in different historical periods, translation versions of the same source text by various translators differ. This is largely shaped by three factors:ideology, poetics, and patronage.