Different Periods, Different Positions: Translated Fiction In China In The Periods Of 1898-1936 And 1979-2000

The 20^th century witnessed two outstanding translation climaxes in China, i.e., the 3^rd and 4^th translation boom. The two climaxes possessed many similarities in their historical and cultural background. Firstly, both of them underwent literary vacuum before the coming of translation prosperity. Secondly, they both were in the transitional period of social development, which required the introduction of the Western achievements into the country. In the former period, it was translated fiction that set a start for the boom of translated literature, gave rise to a new genre (fiction), participated actively in shaping Chinese new literature, and promoted the social reforms. With the time flowing, unfortunately, in the latter period, translated fiction was relegated to the periphery of the literary polysystem.Traditional translation studies pay more attention to the linguistic transcoding and are unable to account for the complexities of translation, especially literary translation. So, from a polysystemic perspective, the thesis puts translated fiction into the contexts of both culture and history. It not only provides a historical and dynamic description of the positions of translated fiction in the periods of 1898-1936 and 1979-2000 respectively, but also attempts to investigate what caused their difference. In terms of description, the thesis argues for their different positions not only from the collected data of translated fiction in quantity, but also from the relation with its heterogeneous counterpart, i.e., native fiction. In the mean time, in terms of explanation, the thesis goes further to analyze their difference on the bases of Zohar's intraliterary and extraliterary considerations. Lastly, it comes to a tentative conclusion: in the former period (1898-1936), besides the"young","peripheral"and"vacuum"literature, as the traditional values totally collapsed inside China, the imminent national crisis urged translated fiction on to taking on the unique political mission, i.e., saving the nation. Thus, translated fiction without suspense occupied the central position within the literary polysystem. Although having many similarities with the former one, the latter period (1979-2000) paid more attention to the economic reconstruction instead of saving the country. Besides, the enriched native fiction made translated fiction have little chance to approach the center of the literary polysystem.All the above discussion and analysis not only sheds light on the different positions of translated fiction within the literary polysystem of the two periods, but also helps to predict and clarify the urgent task of Chinese people in the future. In the new contexts of ongoing economic globalization and cultural fusion, sudden and large-scale foreign fictional translation boom is not likely to occur, though translation continues to play an important role in the transnational communication. So, the urgent task of people's work is to introduce Chinese excellent culture and literature into the world so as to promote a multi-cultural world and a harmonious cultural-ecosystem.