Socio-cultural Constraints On Translators

Xu Yuanzhong is the first one in the world who has translated a great number of classical Chinese poems into the rhymed versions of both English and French. During his translation career of over sixty years, he has published more than sixty works in Chinese, English and French, making a great contribution to the world cultural exchanges, especially promoting the Chinese culture and raising the status of Chinese literature in the world. When we make a survey of his translation career, his personal pursuit of beauty runs through it."The pursuit of beauty"can be regarded as the soul of his translation practice and thoughts.In the context of"cultural turn"in translation studies, this study, from the perspective of socio-culture, based on Toury's translation norms theory, taking Xu Yuanzhong's translation behaviors (selection of source texts and translation strategies) and translation thoughts as the objects of study and by means of an empirical method, objectively describes his selection of source texts, translation strategies and thoughts of different historical periods and then explores their socio-cultural constraints and his cultural ideologies reflected from them. This case study of Xu Yuanzhong may not only deepen our understanding of Xu Yuanzhong, his aesthetic translation practice and theory, and the underlying socio-cultural constraints on them, but also facilitate us to understand the mechanisms of socio-cultural constraints on translators.Through the case study of Xu Yuanzhong, the following conclusions have been drawn. Firstly, socio-cultural constraints on a translator's translation behaviors guided by his or her personal pursuit have different degrees. In one translation behavior, socio-cultural factors play a greater role, but in another one, the translator's individual pursuit exerts a greater influence than socio-cultural factors. And this influence of the translator's personal pursuit on the same translation behavior also differs in degrees because of different socio-cultural backgrounds.Secondly, a translator's personal pursuit exhibits dissimilarity due to the different constraining degrees of socio-cultures in different historical periods. When the degree of socio-cultural constraints is greater, the role of the translator's personal pursuit weakens or is implicit; otherwise, the role of the translator's personal pursuit strengthens or is explicitly expressed.Thirdly, a translator's translation thoughts guided by his or her personal pursuit evolve with the changes and development of socio-cultures, which reflects different degrees of socio-cultural influences on his or her translation thoughts. And the translator's cultural ideologies reflected from his or her translation thoughts and behaviors may also assume different forms with the different degrees of socio-cultural constraints, i.e. they may exist implicitly or be expressed out explicitly.