A Study Of The Ideological Manipulation On Translations Of The Isles Of Greece In China

Since the first time it was translated by Liang Qichao(???)in his political novel The Future of Modern China,George Gordon Byron's long poem The Isles of Greece has gone through a long history of retranslation over a century in China,which established its significant position in the translation history.Translations of The Isles of Greece mainly appeared in two historical periods.The first period is from the late Qing Dynasty to the end of the New Culture Movement(1902-1923)and the second period is from the founding of the PRC to now(1949-2015).During this two special periods,translations of the The Isles of Greece have went through great vicissitudes,which may be caused by social or cultural factors.Therefore,the exploration of the translations of The Isles of Greece will provide valuable insights from the perspective of ideological factor.Translation studies entered a broader social context after experiencing the “cultural turn”,a profound paradigm change.From then on,its focus shifted from the linguistic transformation between the source text and target text to the external social and cultural factors,such as ideology,politics and social background,which largely broadened the scope of translation studies.As one of the major representatives in cultural school,André Lefevere put forward “rewriting theory” in the middle of the 1980 s which mainly focuses on the ideological manipulation on translators' selection of the source texts and translation strategies.In order to make their works accepted,rewriters often adapt the original works to a certain degree to make the target texts consistent with the dominant ideology.On basis of the ideological factor in Lefevere's rewriting theory,the thesis selects sixteen representative translated versions as research cases to discuss whether the translations of The Isles of Greece under different historical background are manipulated by ideology,especially the dominant ideology,and how.Through comparison of the different translated versions under different social and cultural background and with the analysis of the related prefaces,postscripts and synopsis,it discovers that ideology is the major factor to manipulate the translators' selection of the original texts and translation strategies.It also drives the translators to rewrite the original texts to a large extent.