On The Manipulation Factors In The Translation Of Selected Works Of Deng Xiaoping

With the cultural turn in 1970s, translation studies has changed its course from linguistic level to a broader and deeper level. Western translation studies with the Manipulation School as its representative takes translation as a complicated socio-cultural activity. Lefevere, a major representative of the Manipulation School, advocates that all translation implies a degree of manipulation of the source text for a certain purpose. In his manipulation theory there are"three essential factors"which govern the production and acceptance of translations---ideology, poetics and patronage.Generally speaking, the present researches on translations of political writings in China are rather limited for they are mainly confined to the problems of linguistic transfer while largely ignore the context factors which influence the translation. Inspired by Lefevere's manipulating theory, the author of this thesis attempts to explore the macro socio-cultural context of the translation of Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (hereinafter referred to as SWD), a typical political writing of China, and investigates how various manipulating factors contribute to the production of the translation. However, because Lefevere's theory itself has undeniable flaws together with its limited applicability to political writings, the author of this thesis, on the one hand, tries to make use of the feasibility of the theory, while on the other hand, has to refer to some more suitable understandings which do not parallel to the concept of Lefevere. What's more, the paper doesn't rest on the three essential factors of Lefevere, but include the translator's subjectivity as another important manipulating factor in translation which Lefevere obviously doesn't pay much attention to in his theory. This thesis consists of six chapters.The first chapter is the literature review which mainly introduces the manipulating theory of Lefevere including its content, significance, limitations and relevant researches. The second chapter is an account of SWD and its translation which serves as a background for analyses in the following chapters.The next three chapters are the main focus of this thesis. Chapter Three is about the ideological and poetological manipulation on the translation of SWD. Among the two basic manipulating powers in Lefevere's theory, ideology is the real focus of Lefevere and also the author of this thesis for it dictates the translating purpose, principle and basic translating strategy. Poetics adopted in the thesis is not parallel to Lefevere's concept, but is treated by the author as the personal aesthetic ideology of Deng Xiaoping.Chapter Four examines the issue of patronage in the translation of SWD. It addresses the questions like"Who are the patrons?","What is the structure of patronage?", and"How does patronage work in the translation?"Through investigating these issues, the thesis confirms the great contribution made by patronage to the translation of SWD.Chapter Five investigates another manipulating factor---the subjectivity of translator. The subjectivity of political translators is viewed in this thesis as a dialectical unification of manipulated and manipulating. On the one hand, translators are constrained by the authority of the original text and the political ideology of context, showing little control on issues like translating purpose and principle; while on the other hand, they, as the direct executor of translation, still have the freedom in dealing with linguistic issues, showing great creativity on issues like word selection and sentence structure. In other words, manipulated by the political ideology of context the translators are manipulating the translation. To illustrate the relationship between translator's subjectivity and social context the thesis also makes a brief comparative analysis of the translator's subjectivity displayed in the translation of Selected Works of Mao Zedong (SWM) and SWD.Chapter Six is a conclusion of the whole thesis. It summarizes the highlights of the thesis, and also points out the significance as well as the limitations of the research. By investigating the social context and analyzing the workings of those controlling factors in the translation of SWD, the thesis offers a deeper interpretation of how this translation came into being and therefore broadens the present research on political translation in China. At the same time, by applying Lefevere's theory to Chinese political translation the thesis also extends and develops his manipulation theory in the following aspects. First, Lefevere's theory is based on comparative literature and has been so far applied exclusively to literary translation, while the thesis proves the applicability of the theory to other genres. Second, Lefevere's theory is target-context-oriented and concentrates largely on the negative power of manipulation which results in the unfaithful translation of the original, while the thesis confirms the positive influence of manipulation powers in the source context. Third, besides the three essential factors advocated by Lefevere, the thesis also examines the translator's subjectivity as another important manipulating power, and further proves that ideology doesn't have an absolute influence on translation, while the translator's professional competence and conscious intervention are the most important factors deciding the quality of a translation.