The Role Of Ideology In The Manipulation Of Literary Translation

Traditional study on translation has generally been source-oriented, focusing on text comparison and translation criteria. Since the "cultural turn" in the 1980s, translation theorists begin to look beyond the traditional study method. The translation studies involves the study of such broader issues such as culture, history, ideology and power and so on. The new study method is not a denial of the traditional study method. However, it is better for our study if the two methods are combined, which is what the author of the present thesis attempts to do.Andre Lefevere is a prominent western scholar who puts forward the theory of rewriting. The present thesis focuses on the study of the influences that ideology has on literary translation. Advanced is the author's opinion that because of the interrelated relationship between ideology and poetics, it is unnecessary to divide poetics and ideology distinctly. The study focuses on the ideological constraints that shape a literary translation through the case study of Lin Shu's translation of David Copperfield.Based on the evidence collected, the present thesis argues that during the process of translation, translators are inevitably influenced by social and cultural factors and ideology exerts pressures and constraints on translators and influences translators in aspects such as the choice of materials to be translated, the process of decoding and the choice of translation strategy.