Translation And Canonization

With the cultural turn in translation studies, more and more cultural elements are added in the field of translation studies. Translation studies is not longer confined to textual analysis, but is put into the macro-cultural system. The polysystem theory came into being in the light of cultural turn, plays an important role in it and greatly enriches the content of translation studies. This thesis makes a close analysis of John King Fairbank's representative work, The United States and China in the light of polysystem theory, on how it regains its canonical status within the Chinese literary system and explores the internal and external factors that affect a literary work to become a canon in a setting literary system.Chapter One provides an overview of Polysystem Theory. It introduces the origin and a synopsis of the theory. Chapter Two gives a detailed account of John King Fairbank and his work The United States and China. This chapter analyzes the source text and its different translated versions and respective translators. Chapter Three, the core of the thesis, is a polysystemic analysis of the book, by using the two pair of opposites of polysystem theory, namely, centre vs. periphery and canonized vs. non-canonized in peripheral status to the center stage and finally realizing its canonization. This dynamic process is divided into three parts: the starting one is during the Cultural Revolution; the transitional part is from the establishment of diplomatic relationship between the United States and China till the middle 1990s; the last stage occurs in the turn of the century. These three parts fully depict the whole dynamic process of the book's successful canonization in China. And finally, through the analysis of the three periods, the thesis arrives at the conclusion that both the internal (the work's originality,"life expectancy", artistic value and interpretable room) and external factors (a discoverer, literary theory and literary criticism, readers, cultural institution, ideology) are indispensable elements to influence a literary work to become a canon in a setting literary system.This thesis hopes to use The United States and China to verify the position of a translated literature within a setting literary system and dig out the factors that influence the position of a literary work.