A Comparative Study Of Three Chinese Versions Of To A Skylark From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

To a Skylark, one of the best lyrics written by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1972-1822), is well received by the audience all over the world. To a Skylark, collected in Anthology of Shelly’s Poems, went into the domestic scholars’sight at the beginning of20th century, and attracted many translators’attention from then on. Then various Chinese versions came out in succession, among which Guo Moruo’s version in the1920s, Zha Liangzheng’s version in the1950s and Jiang Feng’s version in the1980s have aroused strong repercussions among the audience. All the three versions have been branded with historical and cultural labels, and their translation activities also involve many socio-cultural factors.With the development of translation practice and theories, translation studies have broken through the traditional literary and linguistic modes and begun cultural introspection, which is taken as "cultural turn" in translation studies. Then studies on translation activities are placed under macro socio-cultural background. Andre Lefevere, a pioneer in cultural turn, has put forward the Rewriting Theory that provides a new perspective for translation studies. In Rewriting Theory, translation is regarded as a rewriting of the original text, and some external factors such as power, ideology, poetics as well as patronage are employed as influential factors in the course of translation, and ideology and poetics definitely are manipulative factors that govern the direction of translation. Lefevere has made great contribution to translation studies with his Rewriting Theory. However, the previous studies on Rewriting Theory paid more attention to the genres of novel and argumentative writings which respectively have either complete plots or obvious political bias, while poetry which is particular in genre is less concerned about. It is because abridgement of some delicate plots and replacement of some sensitive vocabularies are often found in those genres instead of in poems. In terms of To a Skylark, systemic study on its Chinese versions is merely found in domestic academic circle. Therefore, based on Rewriting Theory, this thesis selects To a Skylark as the object of study, and proceeds to make a comparative study of the three versions from the perspective of Rewriting Theory. The differences of these versions and the causes would be analyzed in detail from angles of ideology and poetics.Due to great differences in time and their socio-cultural backgrounds when the three versions were published, they have their unique features, and the macro socio-cultural and historical factors directly lead to these differences in micro texts. Before and even during the course of translation, translators are manipulated by the dominant ideology and poetics in their own time, which are obviously reflected in the selection of translation materials and strategies as well as the choice of form, rhyme and rhythm and language. In this thesis, Rewriting Theory is applied to explain the reasons that cause differences among the three versions, which in turn supplements abundant amount of examples to this theory.