On The Influence Of The Translator's Poetics On Literary Translation

Since the 1980s,Translation Studies has experienced a vigorous growth as a separate discipline,and the "culture turn" has been regarded as a major trend of modern translation studies which is no longer confined to the sphere of language,but has been put in a broader context of culture,society and history.In addition,a drastic shift from source-text oriented to target-text oriented has been made in translation studies.That's to say,such deep-rooted concepts as equivalence,literal translation,free translation are no longer the focus of translation studies.More and more attention has been given to the social,economic,political,cultural aspects of translation.Among the various theories concerning translation,the rewriting theory proposed by Andre Lefevere provides us with a fresh theoretical framework for translation studies.In his well-known book,Translation,Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, Lefevere argues that translation is a rewriting of an original text and is manipulated by ideology,poetic and patronage,viz.in the process of translation,translators usually alters or manipulate the source texts they work with to some extent so as to render them to comply with the dominant ideology,poetics and the intention of authorities.His theory lays great emphasis on the translator's subjectivity as well as the cultural elements in translation.Furthermore,it also offers a new perspective for the study of various translation practice and translation phenomena.Ever since then,a large number of researches have been done on the basis of Lefevere's rewriting theory,which has been vigorously introduced to China.But among the three constraining factors of translation,the ideological constraint has been frequently addressed by Chinese scholars while the other two factors are less dealt with. Some scholars may include poetics into their study,but only the dominant poetics of a society is considered.However,the dominant poetics of the society is not the whole scenario for the individual poetics of a translator is also a part of a poetics which is always neglected by some scholars.This thesis attempts to make a study on the constraining factor of poetics with an individual translator's poetics as its focus.The author reviews the existing definition of poetics and further explains the two components comprising the concept of poetics in light of Lefevere's definition.In addition,a case study is conducted on the basis of the previous theoretical foundation. Through the theoretical exploration and the case study,we find that individual translator's poetics sometimes can be the prominent causes for the differences in translation.The author of this thesis endeavors to give a detailed explanation of the two components comprise a poetics for the purpose to reveal the manipulation of individual translator's poetics on translation.It is hoped that the present study may shed some light on the poetical manipulation of literary translation.