A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone From A Sub-cultural Perspective

According to Andre Lefevere’s rewriting and manipulation theory, this thesis studiesthe two Chinese versions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by using descriptiveanalysis method. It investigates the effect that society, history and culture, these externalfactors had on translation from different translation strategies of the two different versions.The translation studies became diversified in the second half of the20th century. Thefocus of translation studies shifted from the language level to the cultural level. AndreLefevere, the Belgian-American comparative literature and translation theorist and Bassnetcollaborated Translation, History and Culture in1990, and proposed the "cultural turn" oftranslation studies formally. This concept combined translation studies with the ideologyand poetics, and regarded translation is a form of rewriting of the text. No matter what theintention is, the rewriting reflects a certain ideology and poetics.This thesis tries to study the two Chinese versions of Harry Potter and thePhilosopher’s Stone, that is, mainland version published by People’s Literature PublishingHouse and Taiwan version published by Taiwan Crown Publishing Company Ltd,. Thesetwo versions are the products of same source text and national cultural context (Chineseculture), but different socio-cultural environments (subcultures of mainland and Taiwan).The differences in ideologies, language culture, social systems and other historical factorsof mainland and Taiwan can be represented in these two versions. Therefore, the thesisattempts to study the impacts that the two factors of rewriting theory have on the formationof the two versions from the perspective of sub-cultural difference. The descriptivecomparative study does not aim at pointing out which is the better translation, but at analyzing the similarities and differences between the two translation strategies, throughwhich to find out the reasons behind these differences, and the impact the reasons had onthe translation.This research narrows down the translation versions into cross-straits area, and ismainly divided into six parts. The first part is the introduction. The background of thestudy is introduced to draw forth the body. The second part begins with the review of thetranslation studies of Harry Potter and discusses several key concepts in the research, andthen brings out the rewriting theory of Levefere. Part three introduces the original workand author and the translation and translator in order to explain characteristics of theoriginal work and background of the translator. Part four makes case analyses on themainland version and the Taiwan version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.Based on the comparison of the original work, the mainland version and Taiwan version,the differences between the two versions and the manipulation force are analyzed. Part fivediscusses the sub-cultural differences behind the two versions, and tries to understand themfrom the point of the sub-cultural differences of both sides. Part six is the conclusion withthe research significance of this thesis.