A Case Study Of Translators' Manipulations On Psalms' Translation In Different Times From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

Bible is not only a religion classic, but a monumental literary work which includes history, social, laws, disciplines, art, folk custom, and so on. It ranks the top in translated versions, circulation among all kinds of books, which makes it the most widely affected book in the world. The book involves many kinds of literary styles, among which poem is one of the most important genres. Psalms, collecting Ephraim's religious poetries, is the longest and the most charming chapter of Bible.Based on Andre Lefevere's manipulation theory, this paper undertakes a comparative study among three translating versions of Psalms, i.e. the Chinese Union Version (the CUV) published in 1919, Wu Jingxiong's translation of Psalms (1946), and Today's Chinese Version (the TCV) came out in 1979, with a view to finding out the influence and restrict of ideology, poetics and patronage in the target culture on the translation process of religious texts. In order to have a further study on the reasons why there appeared multiple translating versions of the same literary work by same target language, this paper uses qualitative method, comparing the historical and social backgrounds the three versions came out, and the manipulation of ideologies, poetics and patronages on translators from a diachronic approach. It proves that translation is carried out under a specific time and culture by translators instead of being achieved in a vacuum. To a same translating text, different ideologies, poetics, and patronages will give impacts on the rewriting of the text, choices of words, the arrangement of sentence structures, the aesthetic of the text, even on the publishing of the book. Through analyzing translation activities of translators in different times by Lefevere's manipulation theory, combining the target language with its culture, this paper studies the three Chinese translating versions from the cultural perspective, hopes to give certain reference value for translators'future translation activities and readers' understanding of different Bible versions.