A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Jennie Gerhardt—from The Perspective Of Ideology And Poetics

Jennie Gerhardt (1911) is one of the literary works by Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945), a famous American writer in the 19th century. Jennie Gerhardt and Sister Carrie are among the"one hundred of the best English novels in 20th century"selected by The Modern Library in America. Since Jennie Gerhardt was introduced into China in the early 20th century, various Chinese versions have come out, among which, the versions of Fu Donghua and Pan Qingling are the most popular. Fu's version everywhere reveals the traces of domestication, with the characteristics of vernacular Chinese in Shanghai. However, Pan's version distinguishes itself as a foreignized one, which brings a spiritual foreign culture feast for our Chinese people. Why are two versions so different? What are the main factors that impact the differences in these two versions? How do the main factors exert impact on the two versions? With these questions in mind, the author of this thesis decides to make comparison with these two versions in order to investigate the reasons.AndréLefevere sates translation activities should be studied in cultural system and declares that"translation is a rewriting of the original text". He explores the impact of ideology, poetics, patronage and universe of discourse on the translators. Different translators living in different times and cultural context have different tendency toward ideology and poetics. Besides, the translators always take into account of ideology and poetics that accord with the target culture during the course of translation so as to meet more readers'demands. Therefore, this thesis, based on the Rewriting Theory, the author proceeds to make a comparative study between the earliest Chinese version of Jennie Gerhardt rendered by Fu Donghua in the 1940s and the other Chinese version produced by Pan Qingling in the 1980s so as to analyze the impact of different ideology and different poetics on the translators in the process of translating.By comparison, the thesis comes to conclusion that: the translators are impacted by their individual ideology and poetics, dominant ideology and poetics before translation and during translation. Specifically, ideology and poetics yield tremendous effects on the translators'selection of translation materials and translation strategies as well as the choice of words, syntax and language styles. At the same time, the thesis proves the validity of the Rewriting Theory in translation and in turn adds abundant amount of examples to this theory.