A Study Of The English Translation Of The Wandering Earth From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

Science fiction is a literary genre that originates in the West.As a latecomer,science fiction has a small group of audience and is less noticed in the academic community.The Wandering Earth is Liu Cixin’s representative novella.In 2013,Holger Nahm translated the novella into English for the first time,and it was published by a Chinese publisher,Beijing Guomi Digital Technology.In 2017,a London-based publishing company republished the English translation of The Wandering Earth,in which the translator retranslated parts of the novella.The focus of traditional translation theories is mainly on text itself.In essence,text is the vehicle of culture and information.Linguistic symbols seem like the tip of an iceberg.If the cultural factors behind text are overlooked,it is unlikely to achieve comprehensive outcomes in literary studies.The manipulation school,represented by Andre Lefevere,made a breakthrough by shifting the center of gravity from text to cultural elements.They believe that literary translation is a kind of rewriting under the manipulation of multiple cultural factors.The three main control factors are ideology,poetics and patronage.Guided by Lefevere’s Manipulation Theory,a descriptive translation study is carried out on the English translation of The Wandering Earth.Detailed analyses of examples are conducted from the perspectives of ideology,poetics and patronage.According to the findings of this research,ideology manipulates the translation of political,religious and cultural expressions,and the translator adopted several translation methods to avoid ideological conflict.Holger Nahm mainly took foreignization strategy in the 2013 version,in which there are expressions and sentences going against anglophone readers’ reading habit.In order to cater for target readers and meet patronage’s requirement,the translator retranslated relevant text in the 2017 version,and domestication strategy became dominant,which demonstrates the patronage’s impact on the style of translated text and choice of translation strategy.The study is aimed at exploring the law for the English translation of Chinese science fiction and contributing to the English translation of Chinese science fiction in the future.