The Interplay Between Ideology And Translation

Traditional target text-oriented translational theory of fidelity and equivalence regards translation as linguistic conversion and substitution devoid of any social functions and motivations, paying no attention to the cultural and political dimension in translation such as gender politics, violence and embezzlement, strategies of deconstruction and narrative politics, so on and so forth. However, any translation is subject to the manipulation of a certain cultural, literary intention and ideology. The criterion of fidelity lays down requirements for concrete translation practice, but it fails to explain complicated translational phenomena, nor serves as a theoretical framework for cultural and ideological studies into translation. Since the 1990s when the cultural school of translation studies put forward the idea of "cultural turn", translation studies have broken free from the trammels of traditional linguistic equivalence theory, focusing upon external factors involved in translation. Thus translators at the macroscopic level, together with historical, cultural, and political factors in the target context are thrown into the limelight of translation studies. Translation activities, conditioned by historical and cultural circumstances of the time when they occur, particularly those in a political change, are undertaken undoubtedly with explicit purposes and social utility.The subject of this dissertation is the interplay between translation and ideology against the background of translation activities during the May 4th Movement, based upon Even-Zohar's Polysystem theory and the rewriting theory and culture constructing theory of Lefevere and Bassnett from the cultural school. The author arrives at conclusions by means of combing and analyzing relevant materials in light of internal laws of translation content and of translational viewpoints of chief translators in this period coupled with macroscopic description and dialectical thinking over the historical, cultural, and ideological situations of the time.The paper firstly makes a theoretical exploration into the interaction between ideology and translation. After defining the meaning of ideology, the paper approaches the argumentation from the ideological impact upon the production of the target text and upon the translators'decision-making, which ultimately leads to the demonstration of the interaction between ideology and translation.After that, the paper substantiates its thesis with the case study of translation in the May 4th Movement period. A survey of translation activities during the May 4th Movement reveals that British works-dominated Romanticism was advocated in the early days; translation of Realistic works was concentrated upon in the middle and late phases when translation of works from Russia and weak nations was all the rage. Meanwhile, translation strategies also went through drastic changes:translation language changed from classical Chinese of supreme status to the vernacular as the only written language form, to the Europeanized Chinese that was strongly promoted and put Chinese vernacular under attack; translation method evolved from the extreme "Hero Translation" to "literal translation", even "dead translation". All these changes did not simply involve a matter of translation content or translation strategy. Rather, they had a close bearing on the development and evolvement of the context of the times of the May 4th New Culture Movement. Namely, changes in translation were aimed at fulfilling the purpose of enlightenment. On the other hand, an observation of the social resonance of translated works and cultural, ideological tendencies of that period unfolds that translation had acted as a carrier of ideological enlightenment, a bridge for spiritual communications, a good remedy for the deficiency of traditional literary views, a paradigm of the construction of Chinese new literature and unique aesthetic objects; it was a project of perpetual significance to the ideological and ethical progress and literary development of China. In a word, translation reshaped the existing ideology of the May 4th period and constructed new patterns of Chinese literature.The research unveils that fundamentally speaking, translation is by no means a neutral activity immune to political, ideological struggles and conflicts of interest, nor a sheer word game of conversion and substitution of discourse symbols between texts; instead, it is the transformation, transmutation, and recreation of a culture, a thought, or an ideology in a foreign cultural, ideological environment, that is, a "rewriting" as Lefevere named. Nevertheless, the rewriting of translators to the original cannot be carried out at will, but under the manipulation and influence of manifold factors like ideology, historical and social elements. And in turn, translation that has been done by "rewriting" also reacts to those elements, playing an indispensable role in propelling the construction and development of ideology. Therefore, the ideological perspective in translation frees translation studies from the simple traditional technical level of "faithful", "smooth", "literal translation", and "free translation", and places them into the contemplations upon the collision, dialogue and resistance between national culture and world culture in the context of globalization for reorientation.