Translation: A Cultural-Political Act

With the increasingly important role translation plays in modern international cultural exchanges, more and more scholars come to realize that translation is by no means isolated interlanguage transference. Rather, it is a complicated activity of cross-cultural communication which involves both the source language culture and the target language culture, especially the various factors in the social-cultural context of the latter. Over recent years, translation studies have taken the"cultural turn"and great importance has been attached to the study of translation from cultural perspectives. The theory put forward by Andre Lefevere, the representative of Translation Studies, of the influences of ideology and poetics upon translation has offered brand new perspectives for translation studies. Based on the theory of Lefevere, this paper attempts to make an approach to the influences of the dominant ideology and social-cultural context upon translation, especially in the following three aspects: translators'choice of words, intended uglification of certain characters in literary works and abridgements during the translation process to demonstrate that translation is a unique cultural-political act.