Translation Around The May 4～(th) Movement

The May 4^th Movement is a turning point in the history of China when China was in the time of social change and culture reform. Around the May 4th Movement, there appeared a boom of translation in China with a lot of foreign works introduced into China. Translated works were employed by scholars as a tool to enlighten people and a weapon to reform the society, which contributed a lot to China's cultural process. However, it is a pity that the translation studies in China have focused on language and texts rather than culture for quite a long time."Polysystem theory", proposed by an Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar which is based upon the research findings of the Russian Formalism and Czech Structurism views all the elements in a system as correlated and interdependent, which provides a culture perspective to translation studies. This thesis tries to explore the boom of translation around the May 4th Movement (1898-1937) within the framework of Polysystem theory.First, this thesis views translated literature as a component in literary polysystem, which approached the center of literary polysystem around the May 4th Movement. As a tool to enlighten people and a weapon to reform the society, translated literature promoted the generation of many similar original writings which reinforced this influence on Chinese culture. At the same time, culture has its great impact on translated literature in determining the selection of source texts, translation strategies and reader's acceptance of translated literature. This is also true when we examine the boom of translated works on social science. Regarding the boom of translation of works on social science, this thesis also gives an analysis of interaction between culture and those translated works on social science.