Betrayal Or Persistence: A Study Of Linyutang's Translation Activities In The 1930s

Lin Yutang is a disputed writer and a prolific translator in Chinese histroy. For some historical reasons, the research on Lin Yutang is not paid much attention to in mainland China and there is still much room left in the study of Lin Yutang's translation activities and translations. Based on the previous studies, the thesis examines Lin Yutang's translation activities in the 1930s under the analytical framework of Lefevere's rewriting theory, hoping to add some contributions to the study of Lin's translation and help the readers to better understand the deep reasons of Lin Yutang's transitions in the 1930s.The 1930s is a crucial part in Lin Yutang's writing career, in which his view on literature, his political stance changed a lot and was criticized as a lagging and conservative intellectual by the left-wing writers. Meanwhile, different types of translation, including translation, auto-translation and editing, co-existed in the 1930s. Therefore, the thesis divides the 1930s into three different periods and adopts descriptive-explanatory method to analyze how the two constraints—ideology and poetics have affected Lin Yutang's selections of original works. Case studies are also carried out to exam the translation strategies of Lin's translated works from the perspectives of foreignization and domestication.Through the study of Lin Yutang's translation activities in the 1930s, the thesis attempts to draw a conclusion that Individualism & Expressionism, Humor & Leisure, and Hsingling literature are the themes of the translations in three different periods. They are closely related and can be traced into the same origin and they are Lin's deep-rooted concepts of literature he insists in his whole life.