Impacts Of Social Ideology On The Selection Of The Texts For Translation

Drawing inspirations from Andre Lefevere's theory on ideology, patronage and translation and on the basis of reviewing studies on ideological manipulation in China in recent years, this thesis finds the way to set its own proposition. As domestic researchers mainly focused on the manipulation of ideology on translation practice in twentieth Century China and there are few treatises particularly on the impact of ideology on the selection of texts for translation, this thesis chooses the choices of translation of the first three translation waves before the twentieth century as the subject of its research and explores the ideological impact on it. Having realized that Lefevere and other Western scholars absolutize the influence of ideology and neglected the subjective initiatives of the translators, this thesis does not examine the selections of themes made by individual translator but analyzes the main themes of translation of certain historical periods and explores its relationship with the mainstream social ideology of the time.By making use of historical descriptive approaches, the thesis describes in great detail the selections of themes of different historical periods from the translation of Buddhist texts from the Eastern Han Dynasty to Tang Dynasty, to the translation of Western science and technology by the end of the Ming Dynasty and finally to the translation of Western natural science and technology, humanities and social sciences at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Through analyzing the social ideologies of the above three historical periods and their relationships with the choices of translation, the thesis finds that there is a direct impact of social ideology on the choices of translation, that is, the selection of themes for translation must meet the requirements of the dominant social ideology and serve it.The author hopes that this thesis can be helpful in exploring the deeper social reasons for choosing some particular kinds of texts for translation in China's history and thus enabling us to better understand the social functions of linguistic symbols. She also hopes that by drawing support from social ideology people can push China's translation practice forward with the time.