A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Gone With The Wind-From The Perspective Of Ideology And Poetics

Traditional translation studies regard translation merely as a linguistic transmission and give the top priority to "faithfulness" and "equivalence". They hold that the translator should cast off the yoke of the tyranny of subjectivity and represent the source text objectively and faithfully. Traditional translation studies have thus focused on the comparison between the source text and the target text, taking "faithfulness" as the highest criterion. The positive aspect of traditional theories lies in that they attach importance to the objectivity of translation. However, as translation does not take place in a vacuum, translators are inevitably influenced by extra-textual factors during the course of translation. It is quite unlikely for them to achieve absolute or complete faithfulness to the source text.Contemporary translation scholars in the west begin to reconsider the issue of "faithfulness" and "equivalence" and reexamine them from a new perspective. They break through the traditional perceptions on translation and put it into a larger macro-context, which helps the "cultural turn" come into effect. Extra-textual influences such as cultural and historical influences on the translator during the course of translation are taken into consideration. These scholars have been aware that translation is not merely a linguistic equivalence. It is a complicated subject closely related to culture, ideology, power as well as politics.Andre Lefevere, one of the representatives of the cultural theorists, has discussed exhaustively ideological and poetological influences on the translator. He holds that during translation the translator is influenced by two kinds of ideologies and poetics, namely, the translator's ideology and the dominant ideology in the society, and the translator's poetics and the prevailing poetics in the society. No matter what kind of ideology or poetics is given priority to, it inscribes its influence obviously in the translated text. Lefevere also deems that the "unfaithfulness" in translation is not merely caused by translator's personal ability but by the influence of dominant ideology and poetics of a given time or by the influence of individual ideology of the translator. The author of the present thesis will commence the text with the "cultural turn" proposal and with an analysis of impacts that ideology and poetics impose upon the translator. Then, based on the theories of Andre Lefevere, the author proceeds to make a comparative study between the first Chinese version of Gone With the Wind rendered by Fu Donghua in the 1940s and another Chinese version produced by Huang Huairen and Zhu Youruo in the 1990s. Through the comparison, the author of the thesis concludes that the evaluation of translation based merely upon linguistic comparison between the original text and the target text is practically incomprehensive. Rather, historical and cultural factors such as ideology and poetics should be given full consideration in the course of translation evaluation and judgment.Apart from the Introduction and the Conclusion, the thesis is divided into four chapters.The Introduction briefly introduces the main theme and structure of the thesis.Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the development of translation studies and addresses to the "cultural turn", a new direction of translation studies.Chapter Two introduces Andre Lefevere's system theory and the influences of three important factors contained in it—ideology, poetics and patronage—upon the translator and the translation.Chapter Three briefly introduces Gone With the Wind, translators of its two Chinese versions discussed in this thesis, and its introduction and translation in China. Through comparative analysis of the two Chinese versions, this chapter aims at shedding some lights on ideological influences on the translator.Chapter Four makes a comparative study of the two versions at phonological and lexical levels as well as some other levels to show the poetological influences upon the translator and the translation.The Conclusion sums up the whole thesis, claiming that apart from language differences, the discrepancies between the two Chinese versions are also caused by social, historical and cultural factors and that different readers' acceptance of the versions just verifies their success and the features of their times.