A Study On Patronage In Yan Fu's Translation She Hui Tong Quan

A History of Politics is written by an English scholar named Edward Jenks. The renowned text A History of Politics was first published in 1900. In 1904, four years after A History of Politics was published at home, Yan Fu translated it into Chinese, with the title She Hui Tong Quan. The initiation of A History of Politics gives the Chinese a new way to view the world and the Chinese situation, though it is rewritten and added by the translator Yan Fu. After its publication, it has considerable influence on the society and people.Patronage, which operates mostly outside the literary system, will be understood to mean something like the powers (persons, institutions) that can further or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature" (Lefevere, 2004: 15). In this thesis, how does patronage take effects in the process of creation, publication, and reception of Yan Fu's translated text She Hui Tong Quan will be analyzed.Since patronage can be exerted by persons, and also by groups of persons, a religious body, a political party, a social class, a royal court, publishers, and, last but not least, the media, both newspapers and magazines and larger television corporations (Lefevere, 2004: 15), this thesis will do the research from powerful individual patrons and powerful group patrons separately.The thesis is composed of five chapters. In Chapter One, there will be a frame of this thesis, including a literature review of the present research on Yan Fu's translated text She Hui Tong Quan, methodology applied in it and the novelties. In Chapter Two, a simple depiction of both the source and target texts will be described. Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the body of the thesis. It will take She Hui Tong Quart as the case text, analyzing how the patrons accelerate or block the creation, publication and reception of She Hui Tong Quan. In Chapter Three, those powerful individual patrons as Guo Songtao, Zhang Yuanji and Wu Rulun will be introduced. As for Guo Songtao, the author will focus on how he helped and encouraged Yan Fu stepped into translation. As an ambassador stationed in England where Yan Fu was sent to when he was young, his influence on Yan Fu is deeply. Translators tend to have relatively little freedom in their dealing with patrons, at least if they want to have their translations published. Patrons can encourage the publication of translations they consider acceptable and they can also quite effectively prevent the publication of translations they do not consider so (Lefevere, 2004: 2). As a key figure in the Commercial Press, Zhang Yuanji had the final decision on what kind of books to be published. His friendship with Yan Fu plays an important role in Yan Fu's life. His publishing principle or his political tendency may influence Yan Fu's choosing books to translate or even the strategies used in the course of Yan Fu's translations. So as to Wu Rulun, he leads the most popular written form at that time. Since Yan Fu failed many times in the Civil Service Examinations, he needed Wu Rulun's social influence to "propagate" his work, so he asked him to read the manuscripts and write prefaces for them, which made She Hui Tong Quan acceptable and readable.We have said that patronage can be exerted by both individuals and groups, so in Chapter Four, the powerful group patrons will be analyzed including the Commercial Press (商务印书馆) , the Oriental Magazine (东方杂志) and the Dagong Bao (大公报). We all know that Yan Fu's translation works are all published by the Commercial Press. As a powerful publish house, it has to deal with the profit problem. So whether the Commercial Press has intervened in the production of She Hui Tong Quan worth being studied. In addition, the two magazines have had introductions of She Hui Tong Quan, what they stated in the magazines may have the trace of some parties, and it is their eminent status at that very time pushed She Hui Tong Quan into a debate about what Yan Fu said in the translated text. Therefore, there will be a simple description of debate among different parties added at the end of Chapter Four. In Chapter Five, a reasonable conclusion will be drawn based on the discussion above. To put it in a nutshell, the patronage system theory turns out to be helpful in translation studies. The further translation studies may be inadequate without it.