On Literary Translation During The Cultural Revolution From The Perspective Of Ideology

The “Cultural Revolution” is a special period in Chinese history. In the Chinesetranslation history, translation activities during this period reach the lowest point, andstudies on the translation of this period are far from enough in the translation circle.However, it never means that they have no significance in study. Because of thespecial political environment China faces at that time, almost all translation activitiesare under the control of the dominant ideology, which can be easily found in thetranslated foreign literary works. Zhaiyi (Foreign Literature and Art) is one of the fewtranslation journals published during the Cultural Revolution, whose contents aremainly from the then popular literature and art of the Soviet Union, Japan and theUnited States. The journal provides rare and valuable materials to the study of literarytranslation during the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, the thesis takes Zhaiyi (ForeignLiterature and Art) as a case study and attempts to explore the influence of the thendominant ideology on literary translation.The thesis firstly gives an overview of the main ideas of ideology in the west aswell as China and the “cultural turn” in translation studies. Then, the use of ideologyin translation studies is discussed, centering on Lefevere’s rewriting theory and theposition of ideology in the theory. Based on them, the paper describes the politicalbackground, political objectives in literary translation and publishing ways of theforeign translated literary works during the Cultural Revolution in a brief way, whichlay a foundation for the in-depth and detailed analysis in the next chapter. The thesisputs its stress on the influences of the then dominant ideology on the journal Zhaiyi(Foreign Literature and Art), including its patronage, or rather, its initiators, and its“professionals”. The ideological influence on initiators is reflected in the selection offoreign work. Through classifying and summarizing upon the selected works in thejournal, the author of this paper finds that the contents mainly include three aspects:works on military affairs, works on social problems in capitalist countries and workson people’s resistance in capitalist countries. All the selection of those works is obviously affected by the dominant ideology of that time, such as “anti-imperialism”,“anti-revisionism”,“people’s revolution” and so on. The thesis lays its special stresson the thorough analysis to a great number of commentary words in the journal toexplore ideological influence on them. Those commentary words are written bytranslators and critics, who are called “professionals”. They are selected according totheir class nature, or rather, their class ideologies. Only those whose ideologies are inline with the dominant ideology can be chosen as critics or translators. Therefore, thelong commentary words reflect the manipulation of the then dominant ideology onliterary translation in a visual and profound way.The thesis draws such a conclusion: Zhaiyi (Foreign Literature and Art) is aproduct of the dominant ideology of that time; its publishing and circulation, selectionof foreign works, translating activities of translators and criticism of critics areinfluenced by the then dominant ideology deeply. Therefore, through the case studyon Zhaiyi, it can be seen that ideology exerts its profound influence on literarytranslation of the Cultural Revolution.