Zheng Zhenduo's Translation Of Tagore: A Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

Tagore, an Indian poet, philosopher and nationalist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, which made him the first Asian winner of this prize. Since the May 4th period, his poems had been translated into Chinese, and Zheng Zhenduo was the first and also the most influential translator to introduce Tagore. Based upon the Manipulation theory put forward by Andre Lefevere, this thesis is intended to explore how the constraints manipulate Zheng Zhenduo's translation activities by analyzing the social and cultural factors.Zheng Zhenduo is a prominent scholar in China, also an outstanding translator. His translation of Tagore's poems, especially the translation of Stray Birds, is renowned for its poetic, beautiful and vivid diction, which enjoys great popularity among Chinese. In the May 4th period, both the society and the literature system of China went through great changes and innovation, which influenced Zheng Zhenduo's translation activities to some extent.The paper first introduces the research subject and research methods, the current studies on this subject, the main subject of manipulation theory and the three manipulative factors. Then the paper tries to explain and prove the existence of manipulation phenomenon in Zheng Zhenduo's translation by analyzing the manipulative factors in Zheng Zhenduo's translation activities and how they acted on constraining Zheng Zhenduo's translation activities. So it would be more accurate and objective to take the extra-linguistic elements such as ideology, poetics and patronage into the study of literature translation to seize the essence of translation.