A Contrastive Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Little Dorrit From The Perspective Of Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory

Traditional translation theories in the West exerted emphasis on the transfer of the exact meaning between two languages, tending to take "faithfulness" as the prime criteria for translation study. In the1970s of the20th century, a revolution called "culture turning" appeared in the field of literary translation studies, which developed quite fast as an independent discipline. Translation studies have been put into a much broader cultural context and the outer factors of politics, society, history and culture that influence and constrain translators’choices during the translating process have attracted extensive attention worldwide.Andre Lefevere, the Belgian scholar on comparative literature and translation theories, is a representative in the culture turn. The rewriting theory advocated by him is a quite famous one in the cultural Translation Study School. Lefevere believes that translators are constraint by the three factors of ideology, poetics and patronage in the translating process and he puts forth that translation is rewriting. Ideology plays an essential role in the choice of translation materials, the adoption of translation strategies and the handling of details. As the collection of the literary standards of a certain society, poetics determines the use of language in the translation. As for patronage, it plays an important role in the publication and spreading of translations with the control of ideology. Different translators, living in different social-historical contexts, will have different ideological and poetical constraints. Through rewriting, translators try to make the translations conform to the ideology and poetics of the target readers, assuring the acceptance of their translations.Little Dorrit is one of the masterpieces of Charles Dickens, a famous British novelist in the19th century. This thesis proposes to analyze the two Chinese versions of Little Dorrit from a social-cultural perspective with the framework of Lefevere’s rewriting theory. One version is translated by Xue Yi’e and Chen Jialin in1910with the name of Ya Mei Nv Shi Bie Zhuan. The other is translated by Jin Shaoyu in1990with Xiao Du Li as the name. Since the data on patronage is not easy to find, the thesis will just analyze the two factors of ideology and poetics.Together122examples are collected from the first volume of Little Dorrit, which are classified into religious materials, ethical issues, plot, language style, natural settings, appearance and psychology description. Through a qualitative and contrastive study, the present research attempts to find out the reasons why these two Chinese versions are so different and how the translators rewrote the original text. Descriptive and interpretative methods are also used in the present study to analyze the examples and explore the influences of the ideology and poetics exerted on the two Chinese versions.Through comparison, it can be clearly seen that the dominant ideologies in the two societies decide the different translation strategies of the translators. Affected by the dominant poetics in their societies, the translators adopt different language styles during their translations and create two different images of the original text through different strategies to cater for different target readers.Through the case study of Ya Mei Nv Shi Bie Zhuan and Xiao Du Li, questions that cannot be resolved by linguistic analysis are answered. The study analyzes31examples in detail, disclosing the applicability of rewriting theory plus its contribution to the establishment of translation studies, proving the impact and guidance on translation practice from manipulative factors as well. So it can be concluded that translators in different times are inevitably affected by the ideology and poetics in their society. To achieve their purposes, translators must adopt strategies allowed by the ideology and poetics. This also explains the reason why there exist retranslations. All versions are acceptable so long as they can meet the demands of different ages and express the translators’translation principles.This study consists of six chapters. Chapter Ⅰ is the introductory part. Chapter Ⅱ is literature review, discussing the development of Lefevere’s rewriting theory and the study both at home and abroad. Chapter Ⅲ is the introduction of research materials and research methods. Chapter Ⅳ and Chapter Ⅴ are the body parts of this study. Chapter IV analyzes the manipulation of ideology in terms of religious materials, ethical issues, culture-loaded words and the plot as a whole. Chapter V gives an analysis of the poetical manipulation in terms of language style, natural settings, appearance and psychology description. Chapter VI reveals the findings of this study and the limitations as well.