A Study On Zhao Jiabi’s Chinese Translation Of The Moon Is Down From The Perspective Of Bourdieu’s Sociology Theory

The cultural turn and sociological turn have offered broaden research perspectives for translation studies since 1990 s.Scholars’ researches about translation have expanded outside of the texts: Which works are worth translating? How to translate to convey the core thoughts of source text? Why did they translate this work? Numerous scholars have answered these questions from different theoretical perspectives.The sociological theory of Bourdieu has become a popular choice.The source text,original author,translator and other related factors are taken into consideration.Besides,the relations between social elements,such as culture,politics,economy and power,and translators are put into the research paradigm.The Moon is Down is the only antifascist novella of John Steinbeck,the famous realistic writer in the USA.Although the evolvement of the story is slow and restrained,it conveys the spirit of refusing to surrender and eulogizing freedom.Especially it has a profound inspiring effect for the oppressed country when published during the World War II.The earliest chinese version has appeared in the Anti-Japanese War Period.Translator Zhao Jiabi is a wellknown literary publisher in modern times.His achievements in literary publishing are needless to say,this article focuses on his translation activities.Based on Bourdieu’s sociological theory,this thesis uses the concepts of field,capital,and habitus to study The Moon is Down translated by Zhao Jiabi during the Anti-Japanese War.By collecting and classified historical materials,the author tries to date back to the historical scene,reveals the reasons and motives of the translator’s choice of the translation from historical,political,cultural,and economic factors,and then compares the texts to examine the translator’s translation habitus to complete the up-bottom description of translation studies including translation contexts,translators,and translated texts.The thesis found that Zhao Jiabi’s choice of The Moon is Down is not accidental,but facilitated by the combination function of the historical,social and cultural fields the translator is lived and the culture,economy and society,and symbolic capital owned by him.In this process,his habitus embodied in his translation has shaped,which can be concluded as follows: the main strategy is foreignization,and the semantic shift in lexis is carried out with the employment of strictly word-forword translation method.As a publisher,Zhao Jiabi was also the “patron” of translation activities.The study pays attention to his translation practice,which,on the one hand,aims to discover the deep connection between the choice of translation and the occupation responsibility and the sense of social mission of the translator during the translating process;on the another hand,aims to offer an alternative theoretical perspective,that is the application of Bourdieu’s sociological theory to present the process of translation choice of a dual-identity translator,for researchers to study the preference and reasons of the choice of translation texts.