Commonalities Of Translators Influenced By The Same Historical Social Ideologies

Andre Lefevere, one of the representatives in promoting cultural turn in translation study, deems that ideology, poetics and patronage are three factors determining translator’s translation as regards translation texts, translation strategies or methods and translation purpose. This thesis finds its theoretical root in Lefever’s ideology theory, aiming at analyzing the great achievements as regards translation scored by Yan Fu, Lin Shu and Lu Xun in the turbulent modern China.The author takes the research method as employed in translation history study, and exemplifies to conduct a qualitative study to seek commonalities embedded in their text-selection, translation methods and translation value. Two questions need answering in the thesis:(A) how did the modern society influence the three translators respectively?(B) what are the commonalities they share in the process of translation in terms of translation purpose and translation texts, translation strategies and translation methods, and translation value? In this dialectical study, the author cares about the generality and representativeness of examples in the main body in the attempt of a fair and objective evaluation with focus on their translation commonalities.The research reveals that in translation texts, they all preferred to choose western works that can enlighten people, overthrow the feudal system and move forward the Chinese society. Widely acknowledged is that most of their works did positively impact modern China in educating people. Some of their works still remain to be hot study issues and are regarded as study models; as to translation strategy and method, YAN, LIN and LU intend to resort to adaptation, deletion and even rewriting which belong to creative treason. This kind of method indicates that the three great translators, social thinkers and reformists, were eager to put their own subjective thought in translation to reform the society. Meanwhile, their translation value enjoys homogeneity in that they do inject vitality to the "dying" modern China, besides which a new round of Chinese literature development rocked in China with the spread of their translations. It is also noticeable that the Chinese language also underwent some alternation in the accelerating Chinese vernacular reform. What is worth mentioning is that the research insinuates the power of social ideology upon translators, which could be explained also in the point of natural philosophy study that social reality decides social ideology.Under the framework of translation study, the author selects three preeminent translators in modern China, hoping to see a rather broader picture through the small one by giving sufficient and reliable instances. A precise and scientific research method adopted, the findings of the thesis weigh more to gain trust. In addition, we hope that the findings may act as a clue to better guide the teaching and research of translation history on the way to establishing the translation study with Chinese characteristics.