The Applicability Of Polysystem Theory

Since it was proposed by the Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar in the early 1970s, Polysystem theory has proved its effectiveness in justifying the position of translated literature. According to polysystem theory, translated literature is normally at the peripheral position in the literary Polysystem but can under certain circumstances move to the center, and the position occupied by translated literature in the literary Polysystem conditions the translator in his choice of translation strategy.Polysystem theory has changed the perspective that had long governed traditional translation theories, which simply emphasized the linguistic correspondence between the translation and the original text. With its introduction into the world of translation studies, the scope of the research has been extended beyond linguistic text to incorporate social, historical and cultural factors. Although Polysystem theory has been widely acclaimed for opening a descriptive and dynamic way of research for translation studies and promoting the cultural turn in translation studies, it is far from being watertight. It has been criticized by some scholars for its non-universality and neglect of the translator's subjectivity.In the Chinese mainland, Polysystem theory didn't attract much attention until 2001 when it was introduced in the third issue of the journal Chinese and Foreign Literature. Ever since then, it has been drawing increasing academic attention. Quite a lot of Chinese scholars have examined its applicability in the Chinese literary Polysystem. Most of them, however, confined their research to the Chinese translated literature in the May Fourth Movement. As to how its applicability is in other historical periods, little research has been conducted yet.To fill the research gap to a certain extent is the purpose of this thesis, based on a comparative study of three Chinese versions of Walden translated respectively by Xu Chi in the early 1980s, Xu Chongxin in the mid 1990s, and Dai Huan in the beginning of the 21^st century, and attempting to test the applicability of polysystem theory to the development of translated literature in China after the reform and opening-up.Through the comparative study, it is found that Polysystem theory is to a large extent applicable to the development of translated literature in China after the reform and opening-up, but due to its neglect of the translator's subjectivity it fails to explain certain translation phenomena, which exposes its non-universality.