A Study On Yu Kwang-Chung’s Retranslation Of The Old Man And The Sea From The Perspective Of Bourdieu’s Theory Of Habitus And Field

As a well-known Chinese poet,scholar,and translator in the 20 th century,Yu Kwang-Chung(1928-2017)is praised as a “polygamist in the field of art”.He not only has insights on translation issues,but also produces varied literary works that include poems,novels,and dramas.Yu’s retranslation of The Old Man and the Sea after half a century shows its special status in his translation career.Except for the discussion of the two versions based on language and style,the research on this phenomenon should focus on the translator himself who kept developing under changing times.Translation studies from the perspective of Bourdieu’s sociology regard the translator as an active subject in that his translational habitus is both shaped by the objective structures inside and outside the given field,and plays a constructive role in the latter.In view of this,the application of “field” and “habitus” helps analyze the interaction between the translator’s habitus and the field of translation.Based on Bourdieu’s theory of “field” and “habitus”,this study is devoted to a detailed analysis of Yu Kwang-Chung’s retranslation of The Old Man and the Sea,and examines the attribution behind the transformation and development of his translational habitus in different stages.As a result,the author of the thesis concludes as follows: As an apprentice in translation,Yu in his first translated version had his habitus shaped by past social and educational trajectories and projected by the literary field at the time,presenting an image as a dependent translator;in the retranslated version,yet,Yu,with years of capital accumulation,found himself having already become a celebrated literary translator who possessed distinctive artistic ideal on translation and kept on promoting it by using those capitals accumulated.On top of that,he was stubborn in his resistance against the malignant Westernization of Chinese which has given birth to his view on language,i.e.,using modern vernacular Chinese under normal circumstances and taking classical Chinese as a contingency plan.Arguably,this demonstrates the translator’s brave attempt to protect the Chinese language as a unique ecological system.Taken together,this study explores the development of Yu’s translation thoughts through the research on Yu’s retranslation of The Old Man and the Sea,in a way to better understand Yu as a translator and his contributions to literary translation.