Limited Manipulation Of The Translator

In the Cultural Turn of translation studies, scholarship broadens perspectives to as many facets as the role of the translator, source culture, target culture and translation product. Translation comes to be regarded not merely as a matter of literary system, but also a question relative to power structure, ideology, politics and economics.Translation is usually textualized and the translator is seen as the main influential factor in translation. Nevertheless this thesis holds the opinion that political powers, ideological influence and the publisher's censorship constitute a lot in manipulation, which occurs before or after the act of translating. And the translator's manipulation, which mainly occurs during translating, is restricted to many constraints.The research starts from the division of the three stages of translation, i.e pre-translating——translating——post-transalting, and points out that the stage of translating is a textual act and the translator manipulates merely out of the textual purpose, i.e. to make an appropriate transfer between source and target texts and to help target readers appreciate the fundamental thinking and aesthetic style of source text. The translator enjoys the central and decisive position in the stage of translating, yet he also works and struggles with two forces, namely linguistic constraints and functional determinants. To achieve a dynamic balance between various constraints, the translator swings between alternatives to make his solutions and create the target text—this is what the author calls "limited manipulation". The thinking of fuzzy sets and system is introduced in succession to further illustrate the dynamic balance between the product and the strategies the translator adopted to achieve dynamic balance among various constraints. Lastly the real working condition of the translator is briefly presented. With what has been expounded in the chapters above, this thesis aims at offering some implications for the translator's manipulation during the act of translating.