The Influence Of Ideology On Literary Translation

Conventionally study on translation has generally been linguistics and source-text oriented, focusing on grammatical comparison and the approach to the literary translation starts from the thoughts that translation is not only second-hand but also second rate, and so the status of the translator has long been neglected purposefully, the translators are often gifted the name of a'go-betweener'or a'match-maker'.Since the 1970s, translation study began to lay on the level of culture with the proposition of'Translation Study'by the Dutch-based US scholar James S. Holmes. With the development of the theory, translation study in 1980s witness the'Cultural Turn'. Translation is associated with the study beyond the scope of grammatical layer, it is involved in the study of a broader and deeper sense such as history, conventions, politics, economics, culture etc. And Andre Lefevere contributes a lot to the development of'culture turn'by proposing his rewriting theory: translation is, of course, a rewriting of the original text. All rewritings whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way. (Susan Bassnett&Andre Lefevere 1990:â…¦)The thesis is based on the theory of rewriting and aims at testifying that ideology has great influence on the literary translation. In the thesis, the translation text of Lin Shu's, the Late-Qing famous translator's Heinu Yutian Lu is selected as the major case for the study.The thesis is divided into six chapters as follows:Chapter one is the introductory part, in which the research background and layout of the study are stated.Chapter Two is Literature Review. In this chapter, the author reviews the development of "cultural turn" in translation studies and the previous research in question.Chapter Three is the introductory chapter on the theory of Lefevere's rewriting theory where his main concern is ideology, poetics, patronage and discourses.Chapter Four mainly deals with the research question, the research Hypothesis and the importance of the research.Chapter Five focused on the analysis of Lin Shu's translation. Lin Shu's translation is often criticized for his rewriting of the original text by means of either addition, omission or mis-translation. While after the analysis his action can be justified for his specific translating purpose.Chapter six is the conclusion part where the author reiterates her idea that translation is influenced by the ideology and also can influence the target language users'ideology.