Government's Undifferentiated Patronage Through Foreign Languages Press: A Case Study Of Translation Of Chinese Fictions Between 1949 And 1966

The proposed study tends to explore how Chinese national government, in the name of Foreign Languages Press, overmanipulates the translation of Chinese fictions into English which were published between 1949 and 1966, and the motivation and means of this overmanipulation. Foreign Languages Press (FLP) is in a subordinate position to the national government since its foundation. It is through this press that the national government tried to introduce Chinese ideology to western nations and, thus, to consolidate its regime and power. The government's influence as patron was exerted through principles and guidelines it issued. The patronage, as it controls the economic, social and ideological factors of translators, can be defined as an undifferentiated one, and it is a unique case in history.The theory of this proposed study mainly comes from the framework of patronage, poetics and ideology raised by Andre Lefevere. With the motivation to unveil how the activities of translation were manipulated and what kinds of measures translators resorted to, the author investigates in Chapter 4.1 the common features among those translated works published by the FLP in translation strategies and poetics. Chapter 4.2 then examines the nature of FLP (its relationship with the national government) and its commitment to the government. The third part considers how the government gained its manipulation through the power of discourse. Also reflected is patron's manipulation on the choice of texts and translators' economy and social status. The focus of Part V is patronage's interaction with ideology and poetics. Patronage played an important role in consolidating the canons, which had been reconstituted by the dominant ideology. The conclusion discusses how it preserved the stability of the social system as a whole through its control on translation.