A Study Of Patrick Hanan's Translation Of Mirage From The Perspective Of Event Philosophy Theory

Translation of Chinese literature is one of the important ways for the strategy of Chinese culture's “going out”.As one of the main forces in translating and introducing Chinese literature,the Western Sinologists have made great contributions to the overseas spread of Chinese literature.At the same time,due to mistranslations of Chinese culture,their translation competence and intention have also been questioned by many scholars.Whether being faithful to the original text or not,the translated texts of different generations are undoubtedly influenced by the translator's subjectivity,external environment,the readers and the publishers' demands.Event Philosophy,as a theory to emphasize the destructive and generative nature of things in the process of their development,has been applied to cultural studies in recent several decades,which provides the new ideas and perspectives for translation studies.As one of the major constructors of Event Philosophy,Terry Eagleton combines dualism,reception theory and psychoanalysis in his book The Event of Literature.He believes that literature is actually an inseparable reading action or event closely related to writing action or event and diachronic contingency,which should be a sort of communication rather than a material object.Translation event is also a dynamic process full of destruction and generation,which deconstructs and then constructs meanings and produces influences.Based on Eagleton's literature view of Event Philosophy,this thesis discusses three elements of translation: the text,the readers and the translator,which play the roles of destruction and generation.Patrick Hanan is a famous Sinologist and translator from Havard-Yenching Institute who has translated a great deal of Chinese classical novels.Taking Patrick Hanan's English translation of Anonymous' Mirage as the research object,this thesis first makes a comment about faithfulness of Hanan'stranslation of Shenlou zhi and analyzes Hanan's preference to Chinese culture or Western culture in different circumstances.Then,from the perspective of the reader's acceptance,the thesis analyzes the two-way relationship between the readers and the translated text,combined with the reading evaluation of Hanan and the overseas readers.Finally,from the perspective of translator's interpretation,this thesis analyzes Hanan's manipulation of Chinese image in the translated text,and reveals how his cultural unconsciousness and the real environment in America affect the translator's choice of translation strategies,methods and techniques,leading to the alienation of Chinese image.This study finds that as a Sinologist with profound Chinese cultural knowledge,Hanan translates Mirage flexibly,combining transliteration,literal translation and free translation,paying equal attention to interpretation and deletion,and the translation can serve his academic research.At the same time,as the successor of Western culture,influenced by the readers' feedback,press requirements and cultural unconsciousness,he also makes reconstruction of Chinese image for some specific purposes in which Hanan selectively spreads Chinese culture,and constructs the Chinese images with obvious heterogeneity,sometimes even negative and fake so as to cater for Western readers' cultural superiority and maintain the domination of Western culture in the world.Shenlou Zhi,as the first Chinese novel concerning overseas businessmen,has attracted much attention after being translated by Hanan.It can be accepted that Hanan's profound Chinese literacy and superb translation ability are commendable.But at the same time,his erroneous generation and destruction of Chinese image caused by internal and external factors such as the text itself and the readers' demands are also worth pondering.This thesis studies the destruction and generation process of the translation of Mirage by Hanan,and points out the effect of internal and external factors in translation,in order to evaluate the contributions of Sinologists to the“going out” strategy of Chinese culture in a comprehensive and rational way,and to promote the successful and fair construction and spread of Chinese image.