Study On The English Translation Of Wang Wei's Poetry From Manipulation Theory

Since the late nineteenth century,more and more Chinese Classical Poems have been introduced to West. Though Wang Wei is less known than Li Bai and Du Fu in China because his poems possess a surface simplicity, the immediate appeal of apparently calm appreciation of nature and precise visual imagery, he has been translated more frequently than any other Chinese poet. With the"Culture turn"in translation studies, this thesis analyses different translation versions of Wang Wei's poetry under manipulation theory. Through probing into the development and change of this theory and introducing the manipulatory factors like ideology, poetics and patron, this thesis gives an object comment on its historical and practical significance for translation studies. Based on all of these, the paper launches the analysis and the research on the English versions of Wang Wei's poetry.The main body of this thesis is comprised of three chapters.In the first chapter, material selection, prefacing, foreword, introductions and annotation of different versions are compared and analyzed in order to avoid only focusing on the translations themselves. And their functions for readers'understanding translations are checked, and then the manipulation beyond the process of translating is explored in depth.In the second chapter, the thesis takes the nature, feeling, and prosody as pointcuts, illustrating the impact of manipulation factors on translation texts, and surveying how original poetry is conveyed in the target language context.The third chapter is about gain and loss based on manipulation theory. This theory breaks through the obstacle that hinders in traditional translation, and expands the field and space for translation studies. And the descriptive and target-oriented methods also provide an objective and integrated approaches to grasp the target language text completely. Meanwhile, as a relatively new academic theory, deprivation of translation itself should be avoided.The inspirations are achieved through the above analysis. Based on manipulation theory, probing into the English versions of Wang Wei's poetry should not just only focus on translation texts. We should combine the manipulations in translation and beyond translation, and put them into the cultural and historical framework to get an overall grasp, and try to reveal the reception and dissemination of Chinese classic poetry in culture and society of target language.