A Comparative Study On Wuthering Heights' Two Versions From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

Emily Bronte was one of the most brilliant writers of nineteenth century in Britain.Wuthering Heights was published in 1847,it was her masterpiece that established her status in British literature.In the year 1942,the first completed Chinese version of Wuthering Heights published and now there are dozens of Chinese versions.Many articles that studied the work from different perspectives came into being since the 1980 s,researchers focused on the following aspects: narrative mode and its profound theme,the analysis of its characters and comparative study with other works,etc.In the 1970 s,with the “cultural turn” in translation studies,translation studies laid emphasis on the translation interaction with culture which explores the influence exerted by culture in context and social background.Lefevere was the representative of manipulation school,he proposed the Manipulation Theory,in his point of view,translation is rewriting and translators make translation strategies under the influence of certain ideology,poetics and patronage to some extent.This thesis adopted Descriptive Translation Studies method to make a comparative study on the two Chinese versions of Wuthering Heights objectively from the perspective of Manipulation Theory.The two versions were translated by Ms.Yang Yi in the 1950 s and Mr.Fang Ping in the 1980 s respectively.After analysis,this thesis drew the conclusion that ideology exert influence on translator's choice of the original text,the content in preface and addition of footnotes.After the People's Republic of China established,the Marxist political ideology was strengthened,the guiding principle of literary translation was that “political standard first and artistic standard second”,a large quantity of Soviet Union works were translated,the translation and introduction of foreign literary works such as Wuthering Heights made readers understand the darkness of capitalism and the superiority of socialism.In the 1980 s,with the reform and opening-up policy implemented in China,the advocate of learning diverse culture was prevalent.The translation of literary works was no longer being guided by political ideology,many European masterpieces were re-translated,Fang Ping's version was among them.The two translators had their own ideology,Ms.Yang Yi appreciated the love story in Wuthering Heights and her translation focused on the introduction of the theme.Thus,in the 9-page “translator's preface”,she laid emphasis on the love between Catherine and Healthcliff.There were only 34 footnotes in her version with simple content.Mr.Fang Ping did in-depth research in Wuthering Heights,he wrote a 42-page long “translator's preface” which was a precious academic paper that illustrated the profound theme to readers.There were 139 footnotes in his version,which reflected the affluent connotation of the original text such as culture,allusion and character's implication,etc.In the light of Lefevere's definition of “poetics”,it contains literary components and what the function of literature is in the society.The versions of foreign literature mainly served for political ideology in the 1950 s,while in the 1980 s,many foreign literary works played the vital role for Chinese to know more about foreign culture,many people regarded reading as entertainment and had higher demand of the language and aesthetics.This thesis analyzed the two translators' translation strategies in terms of lexical,phrase,sentence and figures of speech level.Both of them expressed the exact meaning of the original text,but the language in F version was more elegant,for instance,Mr.Fang Ping tended to use reduplication,four-character idioms and Chinese proverb to reflect the image and mental activity of the characters.In the 1950 s that Yang Yi's version came into being,the “Europeanized Grammar” was prevalent,Ms.Yang Yi was confined by the pattern of the original text to some extent when translating long sentences and special sentence pattern,however,the language in Fang Ping's version was more authentic and he laid more emphasis on the logic between clauses.The publication and promotion of the two versions received the support from the patronage which were two publishing houses with good reputation.The patronage of Yang Yi's version were Mr.Ba Jin and the Shanghai Pingming Publishing House founded by Mr.Ba Jin.The patronage of Fang Ping's version was the Shanghai Translation Publishing House,Wuthering Heights was among its series of “Foreign Masterpieces Series” and its translation and editing were being supported by this publishing house and the committee that consisted of excellent experts.The two translators polished their language under the support of the publishing house in their times,thus made their versions became classical versions in the two epochs respectively.This thesis analyzed the differences between two Chinese versions of Wuthering Heights that were translated in two epochs from a novel aspect--Manipulation Theory.The purpose was not to evaluate which version is better,instead,it was to analyze the versions in a broader cultural background objectively to make us have a more precise and profound comprehension of the features of the two versions and it made a little contribution to the research of Wuthering Heights.