Ideological Manipulation On Translation Of Tian Wen

As an important Chinese classic, Chu Ci is loaded with rich traditional Chinese culture. Its translations have been published one after another. Being a unique poem in Chu Ci, Tian Wen is beyond the comprehension of many scholars for its peculiarity, unintelligibility and multi-disciplinary nature. Different translators have different interpretations of it. The five translations of Tian Wen are the translators'various understandings and rewritings, which is due to the manipulation of different ideologies on translators. The theory of ideological manipulation would take a new angle to study different translations of Tian Wen, and give reasonable explanations to their appearing and co-existing. Descriptive approach will be mainly used in this thesis, with the application of theoretical defining, analyzing, reasoning, ect., so as to promote the understanding of the term "ideology", its relationship with translators, and translation, including the selection of text and choice of translating strategies.This thesis attempts to study the ideological manipulation on the translations of Tian Wen, including the choice of text and translating strategies, from the perspective of politics, culture, etc. It consists of six chapters. Chapter One generally introduces the background and significance of the study, the research questions and methods and the structure of the thesis. Chapter Two is the literature review on the studies of the application of ideology on translation, and translations of Tian Wen and related researches on the translations. Chapter Three elaborates the concept of ideology and its manipulation on translation. Chapter Four explores ideological manipulation in selecting the text Tian Wen. Chapter Five is devoted to studying ideological manipulation in translating strategies. Chapter Six comes the conclusion.Based on the evidence analyzed, the thesis concludes that a translator's individual ideology is influenced by his living society and culture. Owing to different social ideologies and individual ideologies, the translators have different motivations for translating the Chinese classics, different attitudes to the source text and the source culture, and different interpretations of the same original text. Positive rewriting and retranslation can help to activate the translation of Chinese classics. This thesis makes analysis of ideology manipulation on different translations of Tian Wen, in hope of providing a new research perspective of classics translation study.