Translation As Rewriting In Systems

Translation involves the production of a text in one language that was inspired by an existing text in another language. It has never been an isolated language switching activity, but a cross-cultural communication taking place in a given social environment. The "cultural turn" in Translation Studies puts translation in a larger political, cultural and historical context, hence broadens the horizon of translation studies. Instead of being simply regarded as an end product, translation is a rather complicated process of rewriting subject to the influences of various linguistic or non-linguistic factors among which ideology is a prominent force. And the efforts focusing on the impact of these factors upon translation activity as well as the reasons behind these are of more and more significance.The paper attempts to probe into the significance of ideology to translation as a form of rewriting, in a broader sense covering translation, socio-cultural and political issues. The method adopted is the systemic descriptive approach, which sees translation as a norm-governed activity and a constituent of literary system of the target society, interrelating with other elements in other systems, and tries to describe the actual translation and seeks to find possible explanations for translational phenomena.Taking the two translations of Hillary Clinton's autobiography Living History by mainland Yilin Press and Taiwan Times Press as cases for study, the paper tries to analyze some similarities and differences of these two versions and how they manage to rewrite the original work, further explores various kinds of forces behind the translators' decision-making and their interactions in systems. It aims at demonstrating how ideologies, both on personal and social level, play an important role in translation as rewriting and how the social and cultural conditions manifest their influences on translation activities.