On Sidney Shapiro’s Translation Of Shui Hu Zhuan Under Manipulation Theory

With the "cultural turn" emerging in the1980s, translation studies begins to pay more attention to the extralinguistic factors such as history, culture and politics as well as the role of translators than to the traditional linguistic approaches aspects. Among the various theories concerning translation, like skopos theory, feminist translation theory, and postcolonial translation theory, Andre Lefevere, as one of the representatives of the Manipulation School, puts forward his Manipulation Theory that literary translation is not only affected by linguistic factors, but also manipulated by such factors as ideology, poetics and patronage, which takes the literary translation as its subject and puts the translation into the social system for its study. Furthermore, just like what Lefevere argues, all rewriting reflects a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way and that translators usually alter or manipulate the source texts they work with to some extent so as to comply with the dominant ideology, poetics and the intention of authorities. Besides it also offers a new perspective for the study of various translation practice and translation phenomena.Shui Hu Zhuan, a masterpiece of Chinese social encyclopedia, is regarded as one of the "Chinese Four Classics" and has been greatly favored by the public for its stirring tale of a band of men left with no choice but to become outlaws when faced with a tyrannical and unjust government, which has been thrilling and inspiring to readers for hundreds of years in China. The vivid language, distinct characters and unique folk—oustoms have earned it a good reputation at home and abroad. So far it has been translated into different languages by different translators while the Shapiro’s translation is regarded as the most faithful and widespread one.This thesis takes a descriptive research approach by applying Lefevere’s Manipulation Theory to Sidney Shapiro’s Outlaws of the Marsh during1966—1976. It analyzes how the translation to be affected and manipulated by ideology, poetics and patronage from the perspectives of ideological motivation, theme selection and translation strategies. Besides, the thesis tries to find obvious clues showing that how the translator is manipulated by the three factors.In conclusion, through the detailed research, this thesis reaches a conclusion:Sidney Shapiro’s Outlaws of the Marsh is an outcome interrelated and manipulated between his personal ideology and poetics and the dominant ideology and poetics. Based on Manipulation Theory, the thesis is to make comparisons between examples from the source text and the target text, aiming to prove the validity of Manipulation Theory.