Ideological Discourse In Literary Translation: A Polysystem Perspective

Since the cultural turn began in the translation studies, the relationship between the ideology and literary translation studies has drawn more and more academic attention and efforts. The polysystem theory as a literary research approach has been effectively applied to the investigation of the literary translation abroad and at home. In the light of the Marxist ideology theory, literary translation is a cross-cultural communication manipulated by the ideological discourses. In terms of the ideology theory, the late Qing novel translation which refers to the translation of the foreign novels during the late Qing dynasty is not only the linguistic transformation but also a site of ideological encounters. As a result, the late Qing translation studies should be conducted in the polysystem of diverse dimensions: not only linguistic and literary but also cultural and ideological.The late Qing period saw the nourishing literary translation, especially the novel translation. Some representative figures like Liang Qichao and Lin Shu not only engaged themselves in the novel translation practice but also published their own comments and criticism of the late Qing novel translation. On the basis of the analysis of historical literature concerning the late Qing novel translation, this paper applies the polysystem approach to investigating the ideological discourses that manipulate more or less the late Qing novel translation. In the late Qing novel translating activities, the ideological discourse polysystem consists mainly of politics, poetics, aesthetics, religion and ethics.Moreover, the ideological discourse polysystem is characteristic of some dichotomal features: dominant and non-dominant, central and peripheral, collective and individual, innovative and conservative. Of the ideological discourse polysystem manipulating the late Qing novel translation, the political discourse serves as a dominant, central, collective and innovative discourse while the other discourses just occupy the non-dominant and peripheral and conservative positions. Eventually, according to the ideological discourse interpellation theory, the translation subjectivity of the ideological discourses in the late Qing novel translation also manifests the interness: the source author, the target reader and the translator.