An "Invisible Hand"

Critical linguists maintain that all language use is ideologically motivated. Therefore, it follows that translation, as a form of language use, is also ideologically motivated. In fact, ideological manipulation in the process of translation has long since been observed by researchers of translation studies. Nevertheless, a systematic research into the ideological interference in translation has been ignored until the 1980s when some western researchers of translation studies began to take a serious look at the relationships between power, ideology and translation. One of the most influential figures and pioneers is AndréLefevere with his theory of translation as"rewriting".According to Lefevere, the people involved in power positions are"rewriting"literature and the motivation underlying such rewriting can be ideological. In Lefevere's eyes, translation is"the most obviously recognizable type of rewriting"and is"potentially the most influential"(1992a: 9). For him, the most important consideration in the process of translation is the ideological one. In other words, the translator's ideology or the ideology imposed on the translator by patronage and the dominant poetics in the target language culture dictate the translation strategies and the solution to specific problems.In this thesis AndréLefevere's theoretical framework and concepts are employed, and his essay"On the Construction of Different Anne Franks"will be followed as an analytical model. On the theoretical basis provided by AndréLefevere's framework and concepts the author is going to make an analysis of the Chinese translation of Bill Clinton's My Life. By doing so the author hopes to expose how ideology has functioned as an"invisible hand"manipulating the translation of My Life and find answers to the following questions: Why is My Life chosen to be rendered into Chinese? And is there any distortion, deletion, or addition in the process of translating My Life into Chinese? And why if there is any? The author's primary intention is to test the validity and applicability of AndréLefevere's translation theories concerning ideology and poetics in the Chinese context.