Poetics In Translation

Mr. Zhao Yuanren is a world-renowned linguist, a great composer and translator. To date, there has been much research concerning his linguistic contribution, but discussions about his translation are scarce. As the first Chinese translator of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, his version is a canon. When it comes to research concerning his translation of Alice, nearly all previous studies remain on the level of linguistics and translation criticism, focusing on how this book is translated or how children's literature should be translated based on a case study of it. Only few papers, putting his translation into historical contextualization, pointed out that his translation was manipulated by dominant ideology, namely, child-orientation. However,such factors as poetics and patronage were neglected. This paper attempts to discuss the manipulation of dominant poetics on Zhao's version from the perspective of Lefevere's Manipulation theory with its poetic significance included.The thesis first introduces poetics in literary theory and Lefevere's Manipulation theory. Then the poetic context during the May Fourth Movement which exerts manipulation on Zhao's translation is analyzed. Finally, the thesis proves that Zhao's translation is manipulated by dominant poetics through contrastive textual analyses with the significance of Zhao's version in poetic construction included. Based on the analyses above, it is safe to conclude that Zhao's version does not only comply with the dominant poetics but contributes to the construction of poetics. Namely, on one hand, his translation helped enrich and popularize the Vernacular Chinese. On the other, it introduced genres of foreign children's literature like fantasy and nonsense poem.