A Study On Hu Yunhan’s Translation Of The Scarlet Letter From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

The Scarlet Letter is one of the representative works of Nathaniel Hawthorne whois an outstanding romantic writer in the late19thcentury America. Because of his deepthought and skillful writing techniques, the book gained world-wide attention andpopularity since its publication in1850. It is the first symbolism novel in American as aresult of trying innovative writing skills. In addition, it is the first psychological romancefor its thorough analysis and precise description of the inner movements. During thedevelopment of American literature, The Scarlet Letter holds a position of greatimportance and it is regarded to be the first real American literary work based on its ownculture. Therefore, many Chinese scholars focus their studies on such a great work toprobe the cultural and literary value in it. Furthermore, in recent years, translation studiesalso choose The Scarlet Letter as a research object and studies are carried out fromvarious perspectives such as Context Theory and Functional Equivalence, etc. However,few studied it from Manipulation Theory and the majority of such studies choose HanShiheng’s and Yao Naiqiang’s versions, and fewer is carried out on Hu Yunhuan’sversion which came into being in the early1990s. His version appears in the transitionalperiod after the reform and opening up, owing to the ten-year desert of cultural life,Chinese readers enjoy his version very much. The Scarlet Letter was retranslated in thenew era, which enriched the people’s cultural life and enabled them to gain moreknowledge of the foreign cultures.Translation studies took its “cultural turn” in1970s and it was put into a broadercultural context to study. Therefore, since then translation is regarded not only thetransference between different languages but the transference between different cultures.Lefevere’s Manipulation Theory offers us a new perspective to study translation in acultural context. He holds that translation is the most recognizable rewriting, and in theprocess of translation, translator is unconsciously manipulated by the dominant ideology,poetics and patronage in his society. So when different translators choose to retranslatethe same text at different times, rewritings must exist to make various versions toconform to the dominant ideology, poetics and patronage and finally help them gain theacceptance of the target readers. This thesis carries out a study on Hu Yunhuan’s version of The Scarlet Letterfrom the perspective of Lefevere’s Manipulation Theory. Manipulation from thedominant ideology, poetics and patronage is the focus of this thesis. Through an earnestanalysis of the dominant ideology, poetics in his time and careful reading of the translatedtext, the conclusion is reached in the end that Hu Yunhuan’s Version was well acceptedby the target readers just because the rewritings he made conformed to the dominantideology, poetics of the target society. Lots of examples illustrated that the cultural andreligious ideology cast obvious influence on the translation. Furthermore, the dominantpoetics manipulated the translation in terms of words, sentences and style. People’sLiterature Publishing House as the patronage played an important role in the publicationand promotion of Hu’s Version. In one word, a study of Hu Yunhuan’s version from theperspective of Manipulation theory made us gain deeper and more comprehensiveunderstanding of the translated version and American culture as well and finally made asubtle contribution to the study of The Scarlet Letter.