A Comparative Study On Zhu Shenghao's Translation Manuscript Of The Merchant Of Venice And Its Revised Version From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

As a classical drama,The Complete Works of Shakespeare has been having a tremendous influence in Britain and the world.Many Chinese literary writers and translators had successively translated them,of which Zhu Shenghao,Liang Shiqiu and Bian Zhilin were representative.Since twenty-first century,more and more studies have been done on the different Chinese versions of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.However,there are few comparative studies on Zhu Shenghao's manuscript of Shakespeare Drama and its revised version.As a translator famous for the translation of The Complete Works of Shakespeare,Zhu Shenghao's translation is particularly prominent.Therefore,the author would like to try to choose one of Zhu's manuscripts The Merchant of Venice and its revised version to conduct a comparative study.Since the 1970 s,many scholars have begun to find that translation was not just an “agreement” between two linguistic structures,but also a communication between different cultures.Therefore,the scholars' focus on translation studies has turned from linguistic level to cultural level.This turn has been referred to as the cultural turn in translation studies,and these scholars were later called cultural schools.André Lefevere,one of the representatives of the school of culture,proposed a well-known manipulation theory under such a circumstance.He believed that translation was a kind of rewriting of the original text by the translator,which was mainly influenced by ideology,poetics and patronage in a specific historical background.Therefore,this thesis will describe and explain the differences between the translation manuscript of The Merchant of Venice which was produced by Zhu Shenghao in 1936 and its revised version which was revised by Fang Ping in 1964 from the perspective of manipulation theory.Based on the manipulation theory,this thesis places the two versions under their respective historical and cultural backgrounds and applies the method of description—interpretation of descriptive translation studies to try to describe and explain the differences between the two versions at lexical,syntactic and textual levels from the perspective of ideology and poetics.The thesis begins with the discussion of ideology and compares the differences between the two versions.Due to the differences of the time span and the historical backgrounds of the two versions,the two translators were affected by the dominant ideology of their respective society in the process of translation.Zhu Shenghao translated the manuscript in the period of the War of Resistance to Japan,so his language expressions in the translation are characterized by “national defense”.And Fang Ping revised it after the founding of new China,so the expressions of his language are intended to be employed for the purpose of serving the socialist development.In addition,after the New Culture Movement,some words which were contrary to the old moralities were adopted under the influences of “new” thoughts of capitalism.However,excellent moral traditions of our country were advocated after the founding of new China.Therefore,the heterogeneous words considered by Fang Ping in Zhu Shenghao's manuscript were strongly diluted.Then the thesis analyzes the reasons for the differences between the two versions at the three levels from the perspective of poetics.The author finds that the modern vernacular was not very mature in Zhu's time,so some expressions of words and sentences in the manuscript were awkward.On the contrary,the modern vernacular Chinese were greatly developed after the founding of new China,so the expressions of Fang are more in line with the writing habits of modern society.And due to the influences of the dominant ideology,the unfavorable factors of anti-war in the original text were omitted and some words which were related to the “new” society in the original text were strengthened by Zhu.Under the influence of the dominant ideology and poetics in Fang's time,these omitted and strengthened words have been supplemented and restored in the revised version so as to better meet the needs of readers.Based on the comparative analysis of the two versions from the perspective of manipulation theory,the conclusions of this thesis can be listed as follows.The two Chinese versions of The Merchant of Venice are the products of two translators' rewriting of the original under the influence of their respective dominant ideology and poetics.These rewritings are mainly reflected in those facts that some words in the original are thought to be unfavorable to the War of Resistance to Japan were omitted and diluted,and Fang Ping did a comprehensive revision to some parts of Zhu's manuscript which did not meet the modern vernacular of expressional habits after the founding of new China.The revised version is better served for the Chinese people after the founding of new China,because its expression is consistent with the expressional habits of modern vernacular and meets the needs of readers.Therefore,this thesis demonstrates that manipulation theory can reasonably explain the different rewriting activities of the two translators of The Merchant of Venice in the process of translation due to the influence of dominant ideology and poetics in their respective times.