Manipulation Studies Of Translation

Since 1990, great change has taken place with translation studies in the West. The focus of translation studies has turned away from the traditional linguistic studies to the cultural studies. This is called " Cultural Turn of translation studies." During this course, Andre Lefevere raised his idea that "Translation is rewriting. Translation is manipulation." and put forward three factors of manipulation, which are, ideology, poetics and patronage. Thus, the "Manipulation School" of translation studies began to take shape. However, through further study and application of the Manipulation Theory, researchers hold different views that the Manipulation Theory laid too much emphasis on the "manipulated" aspect of the translator while neglecting that the translator has his or her own initiative in the translation course. In order to study the role that the translator takes in the translation manipulation, this paper tries its best, from the perspective of the translator, to work out whether the translator's culture is also involved in the translation manipulation besides the culture of the target language, which is not a common subject concerned in other studies.In this paper, the Manipulation Theory took a role as a basic method, while the culture of both the target language and the translator himself acted as the two main starting points. Comparison was held between the two versions of Li Yu's short novel Xia Yi Lou's translation, which is a 1975 version of Nathon. K. Mao, and a 1992 version of Patrick Hanan. The paper mainly discussed the translation manipulation in terms of aesthetic image defect, ideological differences of target language culture, the social and era mark, ethics, poetic ideas and translation purpose of the translator's culture. The result showed that besides the target language culture, the translator's culture is also an important factor of translation manipulation. At the same time, the paper also drew conclusions that the translator is not only "manipulated" , but also "manipulating" in the translation course. The manipulation is a dual process.