Manipulation In Liu Yi And The Dragon Princess Translated By Hawkes

"The translational action model" proposed by Holz-Manttari considers the process of translation as "message-transmitter compounds" involving intercultural transfer. In 1990, under the influence of Even-Zohar's and Toury's early works in polysystem theory, representatives of the International Comparative Literature Association, such as Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere, published their co-edited book Translation, History and Culture, which marked "the cultural turn" of translation and aroused heated discussion in the theory field of translation. The manipulation school is one of the significant groups of culture school and characterized by transcending the layers of language, focusing on the correlation between translation and culture. It claims that translation is both a kind of cultural rewriting and cultural manipulation and advocates that translators are manipulated by ideology and dominant poetics in the target culture during the translating through some motivation.The story of Liu Yi is widely-known in China and has been adapted by many ancient Chinese scholars. Based on this mythological archetype, there are Liu Yi Zhuan in Romance of Tang dynasty, Liu Yi and the Dragon Princess and Zhang Sheng Boils Seas in Zaju of Yuan dynasty in sequence. A famous British translator and sinologist named David Hawkes published the translated Zaju of Yuan Dynasty——Liu Yi and the Dragon Princess sponsored by The Chinese University Press of Hong Kong in 2003. Manipulated by certain ideology and dominant poetics, David Hawkes made almost perfect efforts to the culture-specific lyrics translation in which Chinese cultural characteristics are fully presented within certain source and target culture.Hermans, the man who firstly put forward manipulation theory and applied it to the translation theoretical studies, wrote:"From the point of view of the target literature, all translation implies a degree of manipulation of the source text for a certain purpose" in The Manipulation of Literature:Studies in Literary Translation. Andre Lefevere, a major representative of the Manipulation School proposed his rewriting theory in Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame that:"translation is a rewriting of an original text and all rewritings reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way".With the translated Zaju of Yuan Dynasty as the case, this thesis takes a manipulation approach to explore the role of translator in the selection of translated text, translation strategies, rewriting of the original text and publishing activities based on the rewriting theory. Ideology restricts and guides a rewriter's creation in terms of politics, economy and social status. While poetics is an integral part of the culture system in which a rewriter's production exists. Nevertheless, there exists obvious deficiency in manipulation theory. It exaggerates the manipulative functions of political, ideological and poetical factors existing in the target culture on the translator and ignores the translator's subjectivity and anti-manipulation abilities which enable a translator to rewrite the text to serve his intended text functions. This thesis points out that the translator is not only passively but also actively exerting manipulation in a dual process of translation due to translator's subjectivity and passivity. The manipulation of ideology and poetics not only comes from the target language but also comes from the source language.