| Translation is a social action,subject to the interaction among various social roles(or agents)in its field.That is,a translation is not just the intellectual outcome of the translator as an individual,but the result of the interaction among different parties involved in the translation field.In this sense,a sociological approach to the study of translation is more comprehensive,hence more objective,as the study is broader.In as early as 1972,the concept of “sociological translation studies” was put forward by James Holmes,the advocator of Translation Studies as a discipline.In his term,sociological translation concerns not only the texts,but the social factors beyond as well.From then on,other schools of translation studies came to realize the value of social factors and got themselves involved to a certain extent.It was not until 1990 s that the sociological translation became independent as a systematic approach to the study of translation when the sociology was applied to the study of translation theories and practice,a theory of an established French sociologist,Blommaert Bourdieu.The key terms of Bourdieu’s sociology are field,habitus and capital.In the field of translation,habitus and capital vary with different agents,such as author,translator,editor,patron,censorships,reader,publisher,reviewer,etc.Field in Bourdieu’s terms refers to the objective network among different positions characterized by competition.Capital(being either economic,cultural,social or symbolic)is dependent on a given field where it plays a role which endows the agent with the power to dominate the field.Habitus,a tendency to take actions or react in a given way,contributes to the field of which it comes out.In short,every actor,guided by his habitus,competes against others based on their power determined by their capital in the field,in an attempt to navigate the translating to their liking.This competition is better visualized in Game Theory.This thesis,with the translation of Wolf Totem as a case study,is aimed at finding out what agents are involved in the translation and how they compete,based on their habitus and capital,with each other when rewriting takes place.The interviews of and by Goldblatt suggest that the major agents active in translating Wolf Totem fall on editor,translator,reader,author,publisher,and book reviewer.And the interviews indicate that the way such roles compete in the field of translation conforms to the game theory: it is a cooperative,complete information and dynamic game,which can be visualized in a game tree as a generalization of the inherent law.As a result of the game,289 paragraphs and 764 sentences of the source text are omitted,and numerous words are rewritten in the translation.And any change in habitus and/or capital of an agent on the tree will lead to different translations,as is evidenced by the translation of Frog by Goldblatt.That is,this tree is of deductive inference. |
