Comparative Analysis Of Mao Dun’s Translation Strategies And Genres From The Early Republic Of China To The May Fourth Period

Mao Dun (1896-1981), a well-known writer, translator and critic, is one of the pioneers of New Literature Movement of May4th period. As a master of New Literature Movement, Mao Dun starts his literary career by introducing and translating foreign literary works and literary thoughts. In his lifetime, Mao Dun has translated at least230pieces of literary works thatinvolve over150writers from30different countries. In the Chinese modern and contemporary literary translation circles, Mao Dun’s translation practice ranks top in translating quantity, translation subjects and related countries and writers. Meanwhile, Mao Dun, an outstanding translation theorist, has published over20translation theses that explored many literary translation issues with width and depth. However, most of the existing studies still belong to the traditional research category, like investigating and reinterpreting Mao Dun’s translation works or his translation thoughts. Thus, it is necessary to apply-Lefevere’ stranslationas "rewriting" theory to analyzing Mao Dun’s translation practice and translation thoughts.By adopting"May4th period" as the dividing line, we can categorize Mao Dun’s translation works into two stages namely before and after May4th movement. Through employing Lefevere’s three elements of translation theory "ideology, patronage and poetics, this paperaims to examine the manipulation of ideology, patronage and poetics on Mao Dun’s translation strategies and translation genres in these two phases and find out which factor or factors exert(s) the major influence(s) on Mao Dun’s translation.Before May4th Movement, Mao Dun was mainly engaged in translating science fictions.In the early Republic of China, the traditional Chinese mainstream ideology and poetics were still in a dominating position.Patrons such as Sun Yu-xiu, Zhu Yuan-shan and Commercial Press had a huge impact onMao Dun’s translation. Thus, Mao Dun had to apply the liberal translation strategy and classical Chinese to translation.Through the analysis of Mao Dun’s translation strategy and genre in the early Republic of China, we can find that patronage exerts the dominant influence.With the rise of May4th Movement and New Literature Movement, the dominant poetological norms experienced a dramatic change. In order to adapt to this change, Mao Dun started to employ literal translation and modern vernacular to translation. And his translation genres were greatly enlarged. Since Mao was in charge of reforming Short Story Magazine and became the editor, the influence of patronage gradually weakened. With the wide spread of Marxism, Mao paid more and more attention to introducing and translating the Russian revolutionary and "the oppressed and insulted" ethnic minorities literary works. This translation model was regarded as "the Model of Weak States". Mao Dun attempted to establish a translation relationship with these "weak states", which could be interpreted as resistance against the western hegemonies. There was a commonality among these weak states or nationalities that they once enjoyed a long history and civilization, but declined, or suffered national subjugation or genocide or turned into dependent territories or colonies of powerful countries in modern and contemporary history. In fact, Mao Dun had a fear of "suffering national subjugation without reform" and he hoped to concretely and vividly show the Chinese compatriots the dire circumstances of the people who suffered national subjugation.Therefore, it could be concluded that poetics and ideology played a major role in the manipulation of translation during the May4th period. This paper has carried out a more comprehensive study on Mao Dun’s translation activities during the May4th Movement period in order to provide the reference for Mao Dun’s translationstudy.