Whirling - The World, Leaving It Two Doors

No translation can ever be done in isolation with regard to the dominant influence and the tight restriction of culture and historical background. Under the manipulation of political ideology and State discourse, the translation activities during the 17 years (1949-1966) unavoidably became highly political. With the guiding principle of"Be in the sole service of the revolution"running through the translation history of these years, translation gave full rein to its role as a tool for political striving. The achievements made during this period, though remarkable, can by no means blanket the lopsidedness in the choice of British and American playwrights as well as their plays.After briefly introducing the translation activities and the major translation theories in China as well as the two significant"turns"in contemporary western translation studies, the dissertation expounds the reasons for choosing this topic from three perspectives: the choice of the period; the choice of the countries; and the choice of the category.The"cultural turn"in translation studies in the west affords us an even broader space of thought. During the 17 years, in which the poetics of"Socialist Realism"dominates, the tendencies of formulism and conceptualization became unprecedentedly evident in the choice of British and American playwrights as well as their plays to be translated. These tendencies, while consolidating the ideology and poetics then, inevitably bring about some negative impacts: presenting the Chinese readers with an incomprehensive, distorted, and somewhat misleading picture of the British and American plays.This dissertation is not intended to be confined to the enumeration of the translated plays, nor is it intended to comment on the merits and the defects in each translation and the different strategies the translators applied. Instead, by making an intensive study of the translation of British and American plays during the 17 years and with the help of the major theories of the Cultural School, this dissertation hopes to catch a glimpse of the influences imposed by the historical period as well as the historical and cultural role translation played.After probing into the restrictive factors that monitored the translation of British and American plays during the 17 years, the dissertation reviews the reasons why Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Lillian Hellman and Clifford Odets had their plays translated into China. What's more, the dissertation also analyses in depth the reasons that account for the"absence"of Oscar Wilde's and Eugene O'Neill's plays during these years, trying to demonstrate from another perspective the target culture's manipulation of translation.