A Study Of Zhao Yuanren’s Chinese Version Of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland In The Light Of Manipulation Theory

The cultural turn in translation studies of the1970s changes the translation research perspective from the traditional language level to the cultural level and gives birth to a transnational translation research school--the manipulation school. Andre Lefevere, as one of the representatives of this school, holds the view that translation is a kind of rewriting, which is, in essence, the manipulation of the original. Translators rewrite for fulfilling certain needs during the process of handling the original texts and producing the target texts. In his book Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, Lefevere puts forward that translation, as a form of rewriting, is always under the manipulation of three factors, patronage, ideology and poetics.Since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was translated into Chinese by Zhao Yuanren in1922, it has enjoyed a wide readership in China. Zhao’s version is successful both in the application of the vernacular Chinese and the trial of verse rhymes. Zhao presents Chinese readers an interesting and curious wonderland with the use of vivid and fluent vernacular Chinese in a humorous tone. He brings this masterpiece imbued with word games which is generally recognized as difficult to translate into the world of Chinese. Ninety years after its publication, Zhao’s version remains unchallenged in its classical status. As Zhao’s version was produced during the May Fourth New Culture Movement, the translator’s language style and his selections of translation strategies were imprinted with specific signs of the times. And these signs are reflected in the text, which serves as material for analyzing the rationality of the translator’s translation activity.This thesis takes manipulation theory, particularly Andre Lefevere’s three-factor theory, as the theoretical basis. In consideration of the historical background during the May Fourth era, the author explores the reasons for Zhao’s selections during his translation process by analyzing the cultural environment then and the signs of manipulation manifested in the translated text. The analysis confirms the fact that translation is indeed manipulated on one hand, on the other hand, it also reveals that translators bring their creativity and subjectivity into full play for achieving a better acceptance from readers. The conclusions are as follows:Since translators are social in nature, they are accessory to the cultural environment they live in. They have to make compromises between the poetics of the source language culture and that of the target language culture under the manipulation of the patronage, ideology and dominant poetics. Translators are by no means passive under manipulation. Whether they are manipulated consciously or subconsciously, they have in their mind the ultimate purpose of pleasing the new readers. Being manipulated never means the loss of subjectivity. The three factors set limits to the development of the translator’s subjectivity which coincides with the ultimate purpose of manipulation. If translators lay too much emphasis on catering to the dominant poetics in the target language culture. and thus ignore the poetics of the source language culture, they may go to the extreme of deviating from the nature of translation.