Ideological Manipulation Of Translation

The third wave of translation in China, which appears in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republican period, is initiated by the patriotic intellectuals trying to seek the truth from the West. Lin Shu is the representative advocator of free translation at that time, unique for his thorough implement of extreme "free translation" and random adaptation, and good at applying graceful writing and artistic expression in literary rewriting, thus brings much dispute for later critics. Lu Xun, however, going against the prevailing practice of domestication, puts forward his innovative proposition of foreignization aiming to keep the exoticness of the original, which stimulates a great change in the field of modern Chinese translation studies. Taking into consideration both his foreignizing strategy and penetrating translation theories, the author keenly perceives that ideology plays a leading role in Lu Xun's lifetime translation activities. The author tries to explore the close correlation between socio-political ideology and Lu's nearly subversive translation theories and practice, based on his translation activities as a case study.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is a general introduction of the whole thesis, i.e. the purpose and significance of the research, literature review and the research methodology applied. Lu Xun is a famous litterateur, thinker, revolutionist, and moreover an outstanding translator in modern Chinese history, yet his translation achievements and propositions have always been overlooked in Chinese academic field. The author not only makes a through investigation of Lu Xun's translation theories and practice by gathering and studying such ancient materials as Complete Works of Lu Xun, Complete Works of Lu Xun's Translations, Theoretical Material of 20^th Century Chinese Novels, but also dialectically justifies the interaction between ideology and translation in order to acquire original ideas in this thesis.In Chapter two, the author centers on the definition of the terminology "ideology", the social background and political ideology in Lu Xun's times, the prevailing practice of extreme "free translation" since the late Qing dynasty and its representative Lin Shu, which lay a solid foundation for the following illustration and justification of Lu Xun's translation activities and propositions. Just as Andre Lefevere has declared, ideology manipulates not only the purpose of translation but also the selection of source materials and translating methods.In the third chapter, the author dwells on the ideological manipulation of Lu Xun's translation theories and practice, including the intention of the translator, the selection of source texts, and the choice of translation strategy, then makes detailed text analysis of Lu Xun's two translation works, The Origin of Fantine and From the Earth to the Moon, all of which represent the political and ideological dialogues behind the superficial lexes and syntaxes. The issues such as the purposeful selection of source texts, the original application of foreignization, the persistent promotion of retranslation, the humanistic care for Chinese nationals, exactly manifest the ideological manipulation of Lu Xun's lifelong translation practice.In Chapter four, the author seeks to examine the mutual relationship between social ideology and Lu Xun's translation activities, emphasizing the counteraction of translation on ideological transformation, readers' reception and target cultural changes. Altogether Lu Xun's translation career contributes greatly to the development of literary and art theories, the children's literature in modern China, and furthermore promotes the progress of Vernacular Movement and Mandarin.The last chapter is the objective and comprehensive conclusion of the whole thesis, ended with practical significance and theoretical originality. Translation is a process that constantly confronts dissimilarities, thus it can never and should never aim to remove these dissimilarities entirely. A translation should right be the place where exotic flavor emerges, where a reader gets known of a cultural other. This is also very much advocated and practiced by Lu Xun throughout his life career. Besides the domineering elements of ideology and poetics, translation is rightly the manipulation of texts by translators of particular subjectivity and politics.Domestication and foreignization, which have constantly aroused heated debates in translation studies, actually involves such sophisticated issues as ideological manipulation and intercultural communication. Lin Shu is favored by readers for his flowing and attractive style in writing, but at the same time he neglects the fundamental function of translation to facilitate cultural interchange of different nations. While Lu Xun attaches great importance to the importation of alien culture and linguistic expressions, which seems too forward to be accepted by his contemporaries. Nevertheless, Lu Xun's perseverance of literal translation has brought in the original flavor of the source text and created a brand-new era for Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. His proposition of foreignization still deserves careful justification and innovative development in nowadays tendency of global integration and cultural pluralism. Foreignizaiton helps undermine the ethnocentrism and cultural hegemony of strong nations, consequently conducive to more equal communication between different cultures and better visibility of backstage translators.Translations are not made in a vacuum but in a certain socio-political culture at a certain historical time, thus there is close interaction between ideology and translation, but we cannot emphasize too much the manipulation of ideology or take understated account of translator's prominent subjectivity and initiative. This systematic research will help us better acquire the intrinsic nature of translation and the essential part of ideology, as well as the role of translators not only in translating but also in cultural revolution and ideological transformation, thus contributing to the visibility and elevation of the translators. It brings much worthiness and inspiration for translation studies and literary criticism. The author hopes that this research will be able to objectively shed some light on the present translation studies from a macro perspective, and make clear the sophisticated contexts of translation, composing a tentative supplement to other academic approaches to translation studies.