A Comparative Study Of English Translation Of The Art Of War From Both The Perspective Of Polysystem Theory And The Traditional Perspective

Compared with the study from traditional perspective, this thesis aims to do research of the English versions of The Art of War from the Polysystem perspective. And Lefevere's three factors in manipulation and the strategies of domestication and foreignization will be mainly discussed in the research.Polysystem theory, established by Even-Zohar in Israel, shaked off the mere text-analysis research method and introduced the extra-text analysis from the social, political, and economic aspects, opening a new horizon of descriptive translation study. Andrew Lefevere from Belgium further developed the theory by distinguishing the factors of ideology, poetics and patronage, and began the"manipulation school"as a result.In purpose of finding a new way of interpretation of the English translation of The Art of War from the perspective of Polysystem theory, the author will make discussion on the translation styles of the two English versions and find an acceptable research model of classical translation study. What's more, the comparison result of consistency from the two perspectives will be showed finally.The research method of comparison research will be used from both the extra-text analysis from the perspective of Polysystem theory and the mere text-analysis from the traditional perspective in the dissertation. As one of the outstanding classical literary works in Ancient China, The Art of War has always been discussed by scholars. Professor Yuan Shibin from Foreign Affairs College translated this book in 1980s, China, and then Sterling Press Company in USA published his version in New York. And Mr. Lin Wusun's version, which was produced in the same period, was published by Foreign Language Press in China. Both of the two versions gained great success in broadcasting the Chinese culture abroad. Therefore, the author chose these two English versions as the study materials.At last, the author concluded that different patronage behind the two versions caused the diverse translation styles, except the consideration of the translators'partiality. So the thesis illustrates that the Polysystem theory is correct by translation cases.And the consistency of the results from the two perspectives proved the feasibility of the research model from Polysystem theory to study the Chinese classical translation texts.