Su Manshu's Translation Of Byron's Poems From The Perspective Of Manipulation

Su Manshu is a prominent poet translator to introduce the romantic literature into modern China. His translations of the active British Romantic poet Byron have not only inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of generations of scholars in China, but also endowed with rare poetic temperament and artistic creation. He could retain the character of the original poems, while many other translators can not. But the researches on Su's translations have still stayed on a relatively low level owing to various historic reasons, mainly focusing on his creation of poems and novels. As to his translations, they only speak of his"obscurity"from the linguistic perspective, or introduce his relationship with the romantic literature from the perspective of comparative literature, or just simply mention his unique style of his translation, up to now very few people pay attention to his translation ideas, strategies or the social functions systematically.In the 1970s, along with the cultural turn in the field of translation studies, Belgian translator Theo Hermans and Andre Lefevere put forward the manipulation theory, which put the translation studies in a macro-social context and described a variety of socio-political factors that influenced the literary translation more objectively and systematically. The theory also sheds a new light for our further study of Su's translations.This paper made a tentative study to analyze the poems of Su Manshu from the perspective of the manipulation theory systematically and tried to explain how the ideology, poetics and patronage of modern China manipulated the translation of Su Manshu, how he performed his subjectivity in his translation of Byron's poems and the significant impact of his translation upon this particular era. Finally the author pointed out that Su's translation is a creative rewriting which implements the unity of the translator's initiative and passivity.This thesis includes the following six chapters:Introduction: This part mainly illustrates the background, the purpose, significance of the research and structure of the paper.Chapter One summarizes the background of manipulation theory and the related researches on manipulation theory both in China and abroad.Chapter Two elaborates the theoretical framework of the manipulation theory. It includes an analysis of the connotation of the manipulation theory, the system theory and the rewriting theory of Lefevere,the three factors and four levels of Lefevere's manipulation theory.Chapter Three introduces Su Manshu's life and translation experience and his ideas about literary translation.Chapter Four is the main body of this paper. It analyzes Su Manshu's translation of Byron's poems from the perspective of manipulation.The Conclusion is the last part of the thesis which summarizes the whole paper: In the specific historical and cultural conditions, Su Manshu used the domestication strategy to rewrite the original, which to a large extent was manipulated by the dominant ideology and poetics. But at the same time the translator's individual subjectivity should not be neglected. His political standpoint, aesthetic taste and cultural preference can all exerted great influence upon his translations. Thus the thesis concludes that the translation is the result of the initiative and passivity of the translator.