Manipulations Beyond The Translated Text

The conventional studies on translation have generally been linguistics and source-text oriented, focusing mainly on how to make the target text faithful to the source text, and how to find out universal translation standard and strategies. However, rule-giving in translation is a thankless undertaking precisely because translation involves much more than the search for the best linguistic equivalent.It was not until the emergence of cultural studies in translation in 1970s and 1980s that target texts gained their positions they had never enjoyed in history. Focus of translation studies gradually moved out of the static linguistic analysis into an investigation of socio-cultural function of language. Researchers tend to show more and more interest in such social factors as politics, culture, power, patronage and ideology, etc. rather than paying sole attention to traditional linguistic factors.With the cultural turn in translation studies, the "target-oriented approach" has become a leading one in the study of translated literature. However, so far, much attention of such research has been focused on textual manipulations, such as addition, deletion and rewriting, etc., but ignored the external manipulation beyond the text, such as selection of foreign works to be translated, translation production and evaluation.This paper attempts to analyze how the influence of mainstream ideology was exerted beyond the translated text through the concrete examples in foreign poetry translation from the founding of PRC in 1949 to the eve of Cultural Revolution in 1966.To judge the literary translation studies in a more objective way, the cultural context of foreign literature translation in China from 1949 to 1966 was analyzed. Then by probing into the identities of the foreign poets introduced and the political implication of the translated works, the paper points out the political implication of the selection of foreign literature to be translated. To realize the circulation of translated works in the Chinese cultural context, translators may clarify the justification or the specific political significance of translation in the materials beyond the translated text, such as preface, postscript, annotation and so on. Moreover, the acceptance of translations was also influenced by the translation publication and evaluation, the historiography of foreign literature, and the commemorative activities for the cultural celebrities of the world.Through careful examination of the typical examples in poetry translation from 1949 to 1966, this study argues that the external manipulation penetrates the entire translation process, which can be divided into three stages:pre-translation, in-translation and post-translation. In the in-translation stage, the text to be translated is the object of ideological manipulation; while in the post-translation stage, the manipulated text is then employed to manipulate readers'ideology. The pre-translation stage includes the selection of source texts to be translated, etc. The in-translation stage consists of the choice of translation strategies, etc., while the post-translation stage is composed of the translation publication, evaluation, reception, etc. The ideological manipulation in these three stages has been illustrated from different perspectives, which include, among others, patron's ideology and translator's ideology.Based on the concrete examples in poetry translation in China, the paper argues that the manipulation beyond the translated text need due attention in the field of translated literature study. Furthermore, the author suggests that the way for future literary translation studies should be a combination of a microscopic way such as the intrinsic study of the language transfer and a macroscopic manner such as the extrinsic study of the ideological manipulation.