Poetical Manipulation In Literary Translation

Although traditional translation studies used to consider translation is merely concerned with multilingual transference, by its nature translation may go beyond pure linguistic activities. Since the emergence of Cultural Turn in translation studies in the late twentieth century, the study of translation has been placed within large socio-cultural context, and its focus has been shifted to the target-oriented and descriptive studies, which turns a new page in the field of translation studies.Manipulation school is one of the models of descriptive translation studies. Andre Lefevere, as a main representative of Manipulation School, puts forth manipulation theory. According to him, translation process, particularly in literary translation, is mainly constrained by such extra-linguistic factors as ideology, poetics, and patronage. Based on Lefevere’s viewpoint of poetics in translation and a case study of Liang Shiqiu’s and Fang Ping’s versions of A Midsummer Nights Dream, this thesis adopts descriptive and comparative research methods and attempts to investigate the significance of dominant poetics and translator’s poetics from both micro and macro levels in the process of literary translation. On macro level, a comparative study of the role of dominant poetics and translator’s poetics in translating A Midsummer Night’s Dream is conducted. It analyzes the currents of literature poetics in translator’s time and the target readers’reception of two versions from the perspective of dominant poetics, and explores the translator’s life and education experiences, the translator’s choice of texts as well as translating purpose under the category of translator’s poetics. On micro level, this thesis investigates the manipulation of dominant poetics and translator’s poetics in translating A Midsummer Night’s Dream in terms of translation strategies, genres and translation methods that the translator adopted.On the basis of comprehensive analyses and detailed comparisons of Liang’s and Fang’s versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the present thesis reaches some conclusions that, under the manipulation of dominant poetics and translator’s poetics, Liang tends to adopt foreignization strategy with abundant explanatory annotations and literal translation methods in prose style of vernacular Chinese, whereas Fang inclines to employ both domestication and foreignization accordingly with some necessary footnotes, and both free and literal translation methods in prosodic style. Therefore, the dominant poetics and translator’s poetics play significant roles in the process of literary translation, and it is the interaction between dominant poetics and translator’s poetics that leads to quite different versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in different historical backgrounds.