On Translators' Selection Of Translation Strategies In Three Chinese Versions Of Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels is a distinctive satirical novel written by the famous British satirist Jonathan Swift.Since its first introduction into China in 1872,Gulliver's Travels and its translations have both received great attention by Chinese readers.Up till now,there have been dozens of Chinese translations in different styles.Moreover,the work is listed as one of the most influential foreign literary works in China,attracting many translation scholars to engage in the translation of the work.So far,the present translation studies of Gulliver's Travels mostly focus on the comparisons of different versions from the aspects of linguistics,skopos theory,rewriting theory and reception aesthetics,yet few have been done from the perspective of sociology.Against this background,the thesis uses the two key notions,namely,field and habitus of the sociological theory proposed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu as a theoretical framework to study translators' selection of translation strategies in three translated versions of Gulliver's Travels.The three translations were published,respectively,in 1962 by Zhang Jian,in 2002 by Sun Yu and in 2006 by Wang Weidong.The aim of the research is to investigate the three translators' selection of translation strategies in translating Gulliver's Travels and explore the possible social factors that lead to the differences in their selection of translation strategies.To fulfill this aim,the investigation of the three translators' selection of translation strategies is carried out from both micro-and macro-levels by applying both qualitative and quantitive methods.On the micro-level,a comparative textual analysis is conducted on the translation strategies in the three versions of Gulliver's Travels to explore the differences in the translation strategies applied by the translators as well as the characteristics of the three translators' selection of translation strategies by suing specific methods such as textual analysis,statistical analysis and inductive analysis.On the macro-level,the study probes into the possible social factors that influence translators' selection of translation strategies under the theoretical framework of Bourdieu's field-habitus theory with the method of literature analysis.On this basis,this paper puts forward three research questions,which are respectively: 1)what translation strategies are respectively adopted in the three versions of Gulliver's Travels and what are the characteristics of the three translators' selection of translation strategies? 2)how do the social factors of “field” and “habitus” affect the three translators' selection of translation strategies in Gulliver's Travels?The original intention of this study is inspired by the interdisciplinary trend of translation studies and sociology in recent years.This study deploys Bourdieu's field-habitus theory in the specific aspect of translation studies,namely,translators' selection of translation strategies in translating a certain same work,in hope of providing a new sociological insight on translation studies.