Political Nature Of Translation In New China (1949-1966)

Ideology has always been the most illusive concept in the whole of the social sciences since it was first proposed by Destutt de Tracy, the French Rationalist philosopher, in 1763. This paper is a study on the pervasive influence and manipulation of the ideology in China from the establishment of the China to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and it is a research of politicl influence upon literary translations from the perspective of Althusser's ideology of sociological function. The"Ideology"of this paper refers to the conscious activities the ruling class executes through its relative institutions, whose aim is to reinforce its ruling status and develop the ruling administrative work. This paper focuses on the application of this ideology of the ruling class to the literary works, especially the ideological manipulation on the translation literary works.Lefevere and Bassnett who belong to the Manipulation School and whose emphasis on translation study is ideology and socio-cultural conditioning of translation, contributed greatly to the manipulation of translation literature. This paper bases on Lefevere's translation theory, especially his greater emphasis on interaction between system and environment, on the system's internal organization and on the control mechanism in literary translation. Lefevere points out that there exist double control factors to regulate this literature system that it might not go too far out of step with the other sub-systemss in the society. And according to these two factors, this paper analyzes the reasons for some relative translation strategies adopted in the Chinese version of The Gadfly because of the ideological manipulation of the time in China. At last, this paper finds out that it is its revolutionary socialist spirit, which accords with the main ideology of the time, that makes this novel a great success in China.Since ideology is used by the ruling class to consolidate its ruling status and carry out the ruling work smoothly through manipulating the social activities, all social activities, including translation activities, serve the ruling class'political activities, which makes the social activities a political trend and endow them with a political nature.However, the political nature depends on different politics. According to the definitions given by Wang Puqu in his ABCs of Politics, the politics of this paper is"the pursuit for and fulfillment of power"under the item of"Non-Marxist-politics". In other word, this paper discusses the"political power". Its embodiment among the social activities by means of ideology turns out to be the political nature of this paper. The political power of the ruling class in China embodies its social activities during this special historical period (from 1949 to 1966), which tells obvious political nature for those social activities. As a part of social existence, social activities can reflect the social ideology. The same holds true that the political nature of social activities will reflect the political nature of social ideology.Again based on Althusser's ideology theory that the ruling class applies its remarkably political ideology to the literary field purposefully, particularly to the translation literature this paper focuses on, the translation literature is determined to get its political nature.