A Study Of Literary Translation In Southwest Associated University

The National Southwest Associated University (1938-1946), or NSAU for short, is a wartime institution, made up of three of China's most prestigious universities, namely, Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University. NSAU, at the critical moment of national crisis, fulfilled its mission: to preserve China's academic culture despite the war, and thus earned itself a glorious and unique chapter in the annals of China's modern culture.NSAU has long been a focus of academic research. However, it seems that scholars have been attaching greater importance to the researches on its educational system, and literary creation, and association activity, and so on, whereas little attention has been paid to the systematic, profound and comprehensive studies of its achievements in literary translation.Owing to the presence of many outstanding literary figures there, NSAU underwent a boom of literary translation, and its translation achievements are indispensable to the translation history of China. Hence adopting as its theoretical basis the theory of three control factors over translation of Andre Lefevere, the world famous translation theorist, the thesis attempts to discuss the literary translation in NSAU from three aspects, that is, patronage, poetics and professional, so as to represent the picture of literary translation in NSAU, and then probes into its far-reaching significance.The thesis consists of five chapters besides introduction and conclusion.The introduction briefs the theme and the basic structure of this thesis.Chapter One first gives a brief summary of Lefevere's life story and his major contributions to translation studies, and then focuses on his theory of three control factors over translation.Chapter Two analyzes the patronage system of NSAU. In this chapter, the establishment of NSAU, the related historical background, the powerful institutions and some influential individuals are all mentioned respectively so as to reveal a clear historical setting in which the wartime literary translation of NSAU was carried out.Chapter Three examines the unique poetic trend in NSAU and then discusses its influence on the literary translation.Chapter Four focuses on several professionals and their thoughts on translation. In this part, their translation principles are discussed in combination with examples so that the uniqueness and feasibility of these principles can be testified.Chapter Five offers a summary of literary translation in NSAU, and then explores into its far-reaching significance. The conclusion sums up the whole thesis.