A Study Of Liang Shiqiu's Translation Of Shakespeare's Four Comedies From The Perspective Of Andre Lefevere's Manipulation Theory

"Cultural turn"in translation studies, which is advocated by AndréLefevere in his manipulation theory, brings about new dimensions and approaches to translation studies and soon becomes an important trend in this field. Based on the Manipulation theory, the thesis attempts to explore Liang Shiqiu's translation of Shakespeare's four comedies with the purpose of finding out how the theory explains the translation activities.As AndréLefevere shows, all translation is manipulated by three elements: ideology, poetics and patronages. Ideology would seem to be a series of form, convention and belief in a certain society which determine the selection of themes to be translated and translator's strategies. A poetics consists of an inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs, prototypical characters, situations, symbols and a concept of what the role of literature is, or should be, in the social system as a whole. The two elements basically determine the image of a work of literature as projected by a translation and frequently tamper with works of literature until they are deemed acceptable to the poetics and the ideology of a certain time and place. Patronage is something like the powers that can further or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature. It tries to regulate the relationship between the literary system and the other systems together to make up a society or a culture.Liang Shiqiu's translation of The Complete Works of Shakespeare is renowned for its smoothness and faithfulness. However, in AndréLefevere's manipulation theory, all translation is a kind of rewriting, and rewriting means manipulation. Therefore, with the rationale of manipulation theory, this thesis makes a tentative attempt to explore how Liang Shiqiu's translation of Shakespeare's four comedies is manipulated by ideology, poetics and patronages. After introducing the structure, subject and methodologies of this thesis, making a literature review to the current studies on this subject and explaining the connotations of manipulation theory and three manipulating elements: ideology, poetics and patronages, the thesis tries to...