A Comparative Study Of The Two Versions Of The Yearling Under The Manipulation Theory

The Yearling is a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 19 39. As the novel was well received by readers, a few years later it was m ade into a color film by an American director Clarence Brown. This film won the Oscar for Be st Art Direction and B est Cinematography, Golden Globe for Best Dram a Actor in 1947. Mo reover, this novel has b een translated into Chinese and introduced to Chin a by many Chinese trans lators. Among them, Miss Eileen Chang and Mr. Li Liangmin made particularly outstanding transla tions of this novel. Therefore, I try to analyze and study the translation works of these two translators.Traditional translation theory study regards “faithfulness” as the h ighest standard of translation, so the original was in the suprem e status. As for the translations which deviate from the original, it con demns both in sp eech and writing while b arely mentions forming reasons behind them. As translation activitie s become increasingly frequent and people’ s cognition improves gradually, people realize that merely viewing literary translation as a comparative study between two languages will only fall into the morass of form alism. Meanwhile, western translation theory study began to shif t from linguistics to culturology between the 1970 s and 1980 s. By breaking through the tradition al comparative translation study which was confined to “m icro” linguistic level, school of cultu rological translation discussed translation under a br oader context of history and cu lture and took th e view that translators were m ore or less res tricted to th eir era’s politics, so ciety and cultu re in the translation process. One of such theories is m anipulation theory. Therefore, the thesis aims to make comparative study on the C hinese translation of The Yearling, created by Am erican female writer, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, translated by Eileen Chang and Li Liangmin.Andre Lefevere points out that the translators are affected by three factors : ideology, poetics, and the patron. First, the dif ferent study is taken on the ideology. It analyzes the similarity and dissimilarity in ideological m anipulation represented in the two versions and points out that based on the similar ideological influences, each translator’s translation will be different due to their own translating style. Second, the com parative study is taken on the poetics to present the poetic m anipulation of the two versions at thr ee levels: lexical level, syntactic level and textual level. Third, the comparative studies of patronage manipulation in different versions will be discussed. Dom esticating approach in Chang’ s version and foreignizating approach in Li’s version are both presented. W ith all the comparative studies, culturology influence on the tr anslators is found as well as the ideology, poetics, and the patron influence on two versions. Some examples will be presented and to prove my view on this point.Through the com parative analysis of the infl uences of ideology and dif ferent poetics view and patron of the two tran slators on the translation, not onl y the effect and significance of the influence of the foresaid three factors on translation can be seen from the perspective of manipulation theory, the helpful implication and value can also be provided for future translation studies.