A Comparative Study Of Three Chinese Versions Of The Jungle From The Perspective Of Lefevere's Manipulation Theory

Sinclair is a famous writer in muckraking movement,whose The Jungle made a stir in American society in the early 20th century.By using realistic approach,the novel was a depiction of ruthless exploitation of bourgeoisie in the development process of accumulating capital and it effectively promoted reform in legislation of America.Before long the publication of The Jungle,the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Beef Inspection Act were passed and became laws of the land.The novel has a lot of description about strikes of the workers,therefore some scholars regard it as the first proletarian novel in America.The Jungle has been frequently introduced and translated in China especially in 1930s.In 1980s,there was a cultural turn in translation studies.Lefevere's manipulation theory was one of the most famous theories in translation studies from the cultural perspective.Lefevere believes that translation is a rewriting of the original text,and all rewritings,whatever their intention reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and manipulates literature to function in a given society in a given way.Thus it broke through the limitation of traditional translation ideas which restricted to the linguistic level and began to focus on the cultural perspective.He stated that translation was restricted and manipulated by external factors and the manipulation of translation contains three factors:ideology,poetics and patronage.Ideology influences the translators' choice of the source text and the translation strategy and treatment of details.Poetics,as a whole of the standard of social literature,plays an important role in the choice of words and language style.Patronage plays a key role in the publication of translation by controlling the ideology.Taking the manipulation theory as the theoretical basis,the thesis chooses three versions of The Jungle and analyses the social background of the three translators,and make a comparative study from three aspects of ideology,poetics and patronage by adopting the descriptive and contrastive approach in order to find out how the three factors influence translators' choices of the text and the translating process.In terms of ideology,the thesis discusses the influence of ideology on translators' choice of the source text and translation process from aspects of politics,culture and ethics.In terms of poetics,the thesis analyzes the influence of dominant and individual poetics on translators' ideas of literature and translation process from aspects of words and phrases,syntax and style.Through comparing the three translated versions,evidence can be found with regard to the manipulation of ideology,poetics and patronage to translation,thus testified the applicability of manipulation theory.