A Comparative Study Of Three Chinese Versions Of Stray Birds From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

Stray Birds is a famous collection of poetry created by Indian poet Tagore,which contains 326 poems.The content of this collection covers a wide range of topics with profound philosophy of life in them;and the language is concise,fresh,and straightforward.Since it was first translated into China in 1922,Stray Birds has been deeply loved by readers.So far,there are 11 Chinese translations of it and this thesis selects three typical ones from them: the first one is Zheng Zhenduo’s translation,which is widely recognized as the most popular version;the second one is Yao Hua’s translation with the most unique language style;and the third version is translated by Bai Kaiyuan characterized by frequent use of modern expressions.With the manipulation theory as the theoretical framework,the present author will make a descriptive and comparative analysis on the three translations.Based on Zohar’s and Toury’s translation theories,Lefevere expands and determines more constraints on translation and puts forward the manipulation theory,an important component of descriptive translation studies.This theory believes that translation is manipulated by a series of constraints,which mainly include ideology,poetics,and patronage.Ideology influences translator’s choice of the source text and translation process.Poetics has an essential influence on the literary genres,literary motifs,and literary devices used by translator in the translation process.Patronage imposes certain ideology on translators by manipulating the publication and distribution of the translation.On the basis of manipulation theory,this thesis conducts a descriptive study and comparative analysis from the aspects of ideology,poetics,and patronage.In terms of ideology,this thesis finds that all the three translations are manipulated by the mainstream ideologies of their times respectively.At the level of poetics,the present author analyzes the translation of words,rhetorical devices,and the language styles of the three versions and finds that Yao Hua renders Stray Bir into the five-character quatrains,which is obscure in language style and is inconsistent with the mainstream poetics of that era.Zheng Zhenduo translates the collection of poetry in vernacular language,which conforms to the mainstream poetics of that time.Therefore,Zheng’s version is widely accepted by its target readers.And Bai Kaiyuan uses modern language to translate Stray Birds to make it more in line with the reading habits of young readers.At the level of patronage,it is found that all the three translations were manipulated by their respective patrons,who exert their influences on the translator’s ideology and choice of the original text by controlling the publication and distribution of the translation.The originality of this study lies in the detailed comparison and description of several typical versions of Stray Birds in the framework of manipulation theory,which expands the dimension of poetry translation research and provides a useful reference for the studies on poetry retranslation.