| People have long tended to take the purpose of the translation as being application-oriented and drawing prescriptive conclusion from the translation. However, the aim of the descriptive approach of translation studies is"to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) through observation, description and explanation. The subject of the studies is everything happens in translation practice; the task is to analyze the basic influential factors, from translator's choice of strategies, brainstorming and revision to the final product in target culture.The study scope of DTS expanded to include the"cultural turn"in 1990s, of which the representative scholar is Andre Lefevere who put forwards his Manipulation theory. Translation does not happen in a vacuum, but it is strongly affected by the target culture. Besides the influence of the linguistic elements, it is also influenced by non-linguistic elements. In Manipulation Theory, Lefevere proposed four mechanics that constrain translating process. They are Ideology, Poetics, Patronage and the Universe of Discourse. The Manipulation School claims that translation is always affected by the target ideology and poetics. It is the patronage who manipulates the ideology and"the professional"who controls the poetics. The theory contemplates translation phenomenon under historical and cultural contexts, which enables people to shift their focus from"the source-oriented"to"the target-oriented".Lin Yutang's Moment in Peking was originally written in English between September, 1938 and September, 1939, and it depicts the political and social upheavals happened in the then China. The novel started with the Boxer Rebellion in 1901 and ended with the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, plus the description of the ordinary people's daily life, their thoughts and the profound Chinese culture, which contributes a lot in getting foreign readers to know what the Chinese people really were during that hard time. It is the panorama of then China.Moment in Peking was written in English, but since Lin Yutang is a Chinese, there are unavoidably translational phenomena in the book, and Lin Yutang resorted to the ST-oriented strategy when he translated the names, addresses, food, customs, dialects, idioms, couplets and some expressions. By employing the two constraining factors of Andre Lefevere's Manipulation theory: ideology and patronage, this thesis works on analyzing why Lin Yutang wrote this book in English with ST-oriented translation in it; why not wrote it in Chinese and then translated it or had it translated into English with whatever translation strategy he preferred without the risk of being charged with not an English original which has too many translational phenomena involved. The analysis is carried out with the descriptive method of DTS to objectively describe translational phenomena involved and analyze the influence the ideology and patronage impose on Lin Yutang's compositing and translating process.Chapter I– the introduction which includes two parts: Literature review of Lin Yutang and Moment in Peking; The layout of this thesis.Chapter II unfolds Lefevere's Manipulation Theory and introduces his four constraining factors: Ideology, Poetics, Patronage and Universe of Discourse.Chapter III lists the translational phenomena in Moment in Peking from the following aspects: names, addresses, greetings, food, customs, couplets, dialects, idioms and some expressions.Chapter IV analyzes why Lin Yutang wrote Moment in Peking in English and why used ST-oriented strategy by employing ideology and patronage of Lefevere's Manipulation Theory. For manipulation of ideology, the political ideology of social ideology and personal ideology are discussed. The political ideology is about America's neutral political standpoint towards Japan's fascism in the early 1930s and China's attempt to win America's support in anti-Japanese war. The personal ideology deals with three aspects: Lin Yutang's obsession with A Dream of Red Mansions; Lin Yutang's intention to change the image of Chinese people in westerners'eyes; Lin Yutang's fear of this book's being improperly translated.The manipulation of patronage consists of two parts. The first part is about the unequal relationship between the translator and the author, which is proved from two aspects: traditional reviews on translation in China; traditional reviews on translation in the west, and the second aspect includes three parts: Norman Shapiro's perspective of fluency; Lawrence Venuti's perspective of Invisibility; Translators'exclusion in the legal regulations in the United State or the UK. The second part is concerning American cultural imperialism, which includes two parts: Development of American cultural imperialism; America's unwillingness to introduce translations from foreign texts.Chapter V analyzes why Moment in Peking can be accepted by American readers, which is talked about from two aspects: American patronage and readers'trust upon Lin Yutang; Moment in Peking satisfies the American's curiosity.Chapter VI comes to the conclusion: Lin Yutang composed this book as an English original so as to avoid this work's being rewritten, therefore can expose the foreign readers to the original Chinese culture, and also as an original work, it can easily escape the censorship of the patronage of Anglo-American culture in order to get timely published in America, and also he had personal reasons. When evaluating a work, absolute objectivity is impossible, hence the mere employment of DTS is inadequate, and adequate combination of PTS is necessary. Lefevere's Manipulation Theory does not include sufficient elements, and also had his personal reasons. The reason why Lin Yutang resorted to ST-oriented strategy in Moment in Peking is also because the special feature of Chinese in which some expressions can not find equivalences in English, thus the Manipulation Theory should not only just take TT into consideration, but should also take ST into account.
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