An Analysis And Comparative Study On The Translations Of Liang Qichao，Yan Fu And Lin Shu From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

At the late stage of the19thcentury, Western imperial powers invaded China further. The Qing courtwas on the verge of extinction and the Chinese nation was going to be enslaved. In order to save the nation,a group of patriotic intellectuals translated plenty of Western social science and literary works into Chinese.Liang Qichao, Yan Fu and Lin Shu were the prominent translators of the period. Their translations werevery popular and contributed to enlightening the Chinese people and promoting the morale of the nation.Comparing their works with the originals, this study would reveal that all three translators did rewrite theoriginals. Rewriting was a common phenomenon in the Chinese society at that time.Traditional translation theories are prescriptive, source text-oriented and lay emphasis on linguisticequivalence. Obviously, the prescriptive approach cannot explain the rewriting phenomenon occurred in theprocess of translating. With the development of the descriptive approach in the1970s, a group of scholarsstudied translation in social and cultural context. Rewriting theory, developed by Andre Lefevere, is one ofthe representative theories in translation studies. In rewriting theory, translation is regarded as a form ofrewriting, rather than a simple transformation from one language to another language. By puttingtranslation studies in the broad social context, Lefevere emphasized the control factors’ manipulation upontranslation.The study applies rewriting theory to the translations of the three translators and attempts to explorethe reason behind the rewriting phenomenon in Chinese society of that time. By analyzing and comparingthe works of the three translators from the perspective of ideology, poetics and patronage, the authordescribes their rewritings and explains why the originals were rewritten. Ideology, poetics and patronagemanipulated the selection of originals, subject matter, translation strategy and popularity of Liang, Yan andLin’s translations. In the end, this study points out that social and cultural elements should not be ignoredwhen the translations of this period are studied.