A Comparative Study Of The Canonization Of Li Wenjun’s And Li Jihong’s Translations Of The Sound And The Fury From The Perspective Of Bourdieusian Sociology

Every translated work carries a fragment of translation history that incorporates the aggregate of choices of agents which are driven more by the agents’ mutual responses when facing specific situations and problems in the production and circulation of the translation than by the general sociocultural backgrounds.Therefore,putting aside the presupposition of analyzed works’ "canonic" or "non-canonic"statuses,the present thesis aims at questioning the a posteriori research mode that is frequently adopted in the previous studies of the canonization of translated works.With the research focus on concretizing the concept of sociocultural settings,the specific ways of compromises and struggling of different agents in cultural production and the diverse inter-textual relationships such as imitation,resistance and transcendence are illustrated in a detailed manner in the present thesis.This micro perspective could give a more real epistemological illustration of translation as cultural production and products,which could help extract the process and mechanism of cultural production and thus further our understanding of relevant translation history.To interpret and reflect conceptually on the history of the Chinese translations of important English novels after the reform and opening-up,the present thesis chooses to examine and compare Li Wenjun’s(published in 2018)and Li Jihong’s(published in 1984)translations of William Faulkner ’s representative fiction The Sound and the Fury that was published in 1929.Grounded on Bourdieu’s theory of the field of cultural production,this thesis delves mainly into the audience’s conceptualization of"canonic translated literary works".Comparing the two version’s substantial differences in terms of textual styles,publishing environment,agents’ behaviors etc.,the analysis attempts to unveil the the patterns of capital distribution underlying the mutual influences between the two translations,and to observe the dynamics and motives of the agents in the cultural production,aiming at expounding the interrelations between the mechanism of the canonization of western literary works and the audience’s conceptualization of canonic translated literature.The major findings of this thesis are as follows:First,the audience’s contrasting comments on Li Wenjun’s and Li Jihong’s translations are an embodiment of the struggles between the different principles of hierarchization of cultural production,which are not directly causally connected with the textual performances of the two versions.Second,with the conspicuous gap between the two versions in terms of their statuses as conceived by the mass audience,the two translations are nonetheless both the products of the sub-field of large-scale production that serve the mass audience,and the autonomous elements of both versions have to be subject to the heteronomous principles of hierarchization.Third,Li Jihong competes with Li Wenjun for second-order symbolic capital,yet,paradoxically,he has to rely on the current hierarchical order of cultural production and the reputation of Li Wenjun’s translation to promote his own,which adds capitals to the canonization of Li Wenjun’s version.Fourth,the Chinese mass audience’s view on the canonization of literary translation shows remarkable ambivalence which on the one hand equates the canonicity of translated literary works with external factors like the fame of original works and translators,yet simultaneously excludes the heteronomous principle by emphasizing the "intrinsic canonicity" of translated works.Such a self-contradicting view resides in the hysteresis of the agents’ habitus,reflecting the audience’s paradoxical yearning for the autonomy of literature and fear of the uncertainty brought about by the change of principles of hierarchization and the lack of simultaneity between the agents’conceptualization of cultural production and the social reality.The paradoxical mindset informs the acceptance,dissemination and canonization of both Li Wenjun’s and Li Jihong’s translations,bespeaking the order of cultural production constructed by historical and realistic factors.