A Study Of Literary Translation In China Between 1949 And 1966

Literary translation in China between 1949 and 1966 has long been neglected by scholars, and only in recent years have they begun to concern themselves with it. However, up till now, few scholars have studied literary translation in China between 1949 and 1966, and still fewer people have done researches on the literary translation during this particular period of time from the perspective of "polysytem theory".Inspired by Toury's preliminary norm and Lefevere's views about ideology, poetics and patronage, the thesis takes Itamar Even-Zohar's polysystem as the fundamental theory frame. Polysystem theory regards a variety of semiotics phenomena as an open and dynamic system which is made up of many sub-systems. Translated literature is considered to be an element of cultural polysystem. The modes, positions and functions of translated literature are determined by its cosystems—translation norms and ideology, but ideology constrains translation norms, and in turn, the two together control the canonicity of translated literature. The literary translation between 1949 and 1966 was highly ideologized, and had its own characteristics, i.e. literary translation during this period was under the leadership of Marxism-Leninism theory and Mao Zedong thoughts, under the leadership of the Party and government, and the source texts translators chose to translate must be in accordance with the contemporary dominant political ideology. Among all the literary works translated, Russian and Soviet Union's literature accounts for more than a half, and literary texts for some European and American capitalist countries were also translated, but most of those works belonged to classic literature. From the middle of the 1950s, we strengthened the translation of literary works from some Asian, African and Latin-American countries.The core of this thesis is the description of literary translation between 1949 and 1966 from the perspective of polysytem theory. The author of the thesis will analyze this specific period's literary translation from the following aspect: the influence of ideology, poetics, patronage, and translation preliminary norm on the selection of source texts, the position of translated literature in the literary polysytem, translated literature repertoire (including static canonicity and dynamic canonicity), and the influence of translated literature on national literary creation in China.Through the description and research of literary translation during this period, the aim of this thesis is to prove that using the descriptive method—polysystem theory, we can more objectively describe the characteristics of literary translation and present a clearer picture of it, make clear the reasons for the formation of these characteristics and arouse people's attention to the literary translation during this period. On the other hand, the author of this thesis intends to illustrate that the study of literary translation during a certain period from the perspective of polysystem theory is a fresh and valuable endeavor for translation studies.