Manipulated Translator

With the steady surge of its national power and international influence, thewestern world eager to know more about China, its past, present and future, SinceChinese literature is a good mirror to reflect the development of China, the translationthoughts and activities of Howard Goldblatt, the forerunner of Chinese literaturetranslation, is worthy of further studies. However, present studies mainly focus onanalyzing a specific novel translated by Goldblatt from a theoretical perspective orstudying Goldblatt’s translation thoughts, few studies on his translation from theperspective of manipulation theory has been carried out.This thesis points out that ideology, poetics and patronage all influence translators’text selection and translation activities. Translator’s ideology must be influenced bythe social and cultural background he lives in and poetics which makes translator tocompromise so as to meet western readers’ reading habits as well as parameters set bypatronage in charge of the ideology, so that translated works would get more popularity.Poetics and patronage, as the reflection and guardian of ideology behind, alsomanipulate text selection and translation methods.This thesis attempts to study Goldblatt’s literary translation by exploring to histext selections, employments of translation strategies, deletion of contents, andadjustment of the story structure. First, this thesis studies on the influences of socialand cultural background and ideological factors on Goldblatt’s text selection, andfurthers his personal ideological manipulation over his translation activities. Second,the mainstream poetics and Goldblatt’s poetics manipulate his text selection and at last,this paper introduces four patronages which are the media, awards, fund foundationsand patrons behind and their manipulation over translation.Through analysis, this thesis finds that Goldblatt’s text selection and translationprocess are manipulated by ideology, poetics and patronage. However, in fact,Goldblatt is not totally manipulated by external factors, as a professional and maturetranslator he also has his subjectivity. In a word, this paper systematically analyzesGoldblatt’s translation thoughts and activities, aiming to provide new resources forfurther researches.