A Study Of Lin Yutang’s English Translation Of Quiet Dream Shadows From Manipulation Theory Perspective

Lin Yutang, as a great master in translation and a famous writer, is the only chinese who had been nominated for the Nobel Prize four times in the last century. As a great translator, he had successfully fulfilled his long-cherished dream about “spreading Chinese wisdom throughout the world” and set a good example down on “disseminating Chinese wisdom to the west”. But as a great translator, he was not as famous as Yan Fu who was very popular overseas.The reason is that Yan Fu was famous for his E-C translation. However, in the 20 th century, China was very weak in C-E translation, and Lin Yutang was an expert in C-E translting.But now,Chinese culture is ready to be pushed through many other countries and be known, therefore it is essential to study Lin’s translation.Centering on Lin’s C-E translation-Quiet Dream Shadows, the research analyses the reason why Lin Yutang chooses to translate it into English from two different aspects. The research also analyses the translation strategies Lin used in translating, for example, cultural omission, cultural substitution, paraphase and annotation. Besides, by using the manipulation theory, the research does a deep study on the choosing of translation strategies from poetics and ideology perspectives.The research finds that Lin Yutang chose to translate Quiet Dream Shadows for two reasons, one is Lin Yutang had a preference for essays in Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty, and he highly praised the “leisure” of Taoism. So by translating Quiet Dream Shadows into English, Lin Yutang had introduced a new writing sytle to the Western world, and spreaded widely. At the same time, by the considertation of target language readers, Lin Yutang had proven up that poetics and ideology play an important role in the selection of translation strategy.