Lin Shu's Translation: A Perspective Of The Manipulation Theory

Lin Shu is one of the most influential translators in the late Qing period in China. He initiated modern literary translation, and his translations imported new ideas, literary concepts, styles and techniques from the west. These, in turn, influenced the emergence and development of modern Chinese literature. Many translators and scholars have written articles trying to evaluate and assess Lin's translation from Lin's times on, but most of them have done this traditionally from the aspect of language. As a result, most past studies often criticized Lin's translations for being unfaithful to the original and blamed him for making arbitrary changes in the source texts. However, his unfaithful translations were still welcomed by readers of his time and had tremendous social and cultural impact. This unique translation phenomenon cannot be explained by traditional translation studies which are preoccupied with the evaluation of the target text based on a comparison of the source and target texts on the word and sentence level. In order to give a reasonable explanation of Lin Shu's unique translational phenomenon, this paper attempts probe into Lin Shu's translation using Andre Levefere's manipulation theory, discussing how ideology, patronage and poetics impact Lin's translation.This thesis is composed of five parts:The introduction begins with a survey of scholarship on Lin Shu's translation with some background information. It also explains the significance of this research and points out the perspective and methods to be used.Chapter One elaborates the theoretical basis—the theory of manipulation put forward by Andre Lefevere. Lefevere points out that as one of the main forms of rewriting, translation is always in the service of power, and rewrites and manipulates literature to fit the special ideology and poetics in the target society. According to him, the literary system possesses a two controlling factors: one factor governs the system largely from the outside and the other keeps order within the literary system, and these two factors are represented by patronage and professionals respectively. Patrons are more interested in ideology, whereas professionals in poetics. Both ideology and poetics, therefore, control the literary system in the final analysis, and hence the production of literature.Chapter Two studies Lin Shu's historical background and how it is related to Lin Shu's complex ideology and patronage. Deeply influenced by Chinese traditional culture, on the one hand, he advocated reforming the traditional culture, and on the other he didn't approve radical reform. Reformists litterateurs at that time, such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao tried to raise the status and prestige of novel in order to use novel as a tool for propaganda. As Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao were two of Lin's main patrons, most of Lin Shu's translated works were novels.Chapter Three is the main body of the thesis. The author analyzes the characteristics of Lin Shu's translation. This thesis divides his translation career into two periods. In the first period, his translation contains prefaces, postscripts, introduction, translation purposes, afterwords, and comments on translation; in the second period, such things were greatly reduced. As a translator with strong patriotic feelings, Lin Shu translated with a concrete purpose. He thought that novel could cultivate people, and that translating novels was a good way to save the country. Quoting examples from Lins' translations, the thesis concludes that Lin Shu produced various translated works stamped with his own style by employing different translating skills: deletion, addition , change the source text's style, rewriting the title of the source text, changing the narrating perspective of the original works, etc. As pointed out by various reviewers and critics, Lin's translation was not faithful to the source texts, but his translation created a new style at that time, which was appreciated by later scholars.The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments of the previous parts. In the traditional source-oriented translation studies, Lin Shu's translations were often criticized. But we can conclude that it was the joint influence of the cultural background, ideology, patronage and poetics of modern China that has successfully manipulated Lin's translation and produced its unique phenomenon.