A Contrastive Study Of Two Translations Of Fusheng Liuji From Bourdieu’s Sociological Perspective

Following the cultural turn of translation studies in the sixties of the twentieth century,the translation studies in the late 1990 s also ushered in a new paradigmatic shift-sociology of translation.In this sense,translation is not only a linguistic behavior,cultural behavior,but also a social behavior.Proposed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,key concepts such as “habitus”,“field”,“capital” and together can provide a relatively all-round perspective to study translation and translators in different times and social spaces.Fusheng Liuji is a memoir written by Shen Fu in the late Qing Dynasty.Being an excellent blend of autobiography,romance and social document,this piece of literary work has attracted tremendous attention from readers around the world and its English translation has always been a hot issue in translation studies.However,the previous translation studies mainly focused on the most prominent translation by Lin Yutang in1935,but the latest one translated by Canadian sinologist Graham Sanders in 2011 has not been given due attention.Moreover,most of the translation studies generally adopted cultural and linguistic perspectives which tends to render translation only in linguistic level or cultural level,and researches borrowing sociological perspectives are very few.In this thesis,by adopting Bourdieu’s sociological theory-Theory of Practice as theoretical foundation and three key concepts,field,habitus and capital as its analytical tools,the author intends to reinterpret the two translations made by Lin Yutang and Graham Sanders from a sociological perspective.Through literature analysis,this thesis attempts to,at the macro level,look into the specific fields that the two translations were located during the production process and different forms of capitals that were possessed by the two translators.Then by combing through the diverse social life trajectories led by the two translators,thepaper examines translators’ specific habitus and the constructive influence of fields and capitals on the formation of it.At the micro level,this thesis will first undertake text analysis,literature analysis as well as statistical analysis to describe the translation purposes and translation strategies of Lin’s version and Sander’s version.Then the author attempts to investigate the possible internal and external social factors contributing to these differences with a hope to promote the applicability of Bourdieu’s sociological perspective on translation studies since translation activity is deeply embedded in society.