A Contrastive Study Of Lu Xun's And Liang Shiqiu's Translation Viewpoints: A Manipulative Approach

Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu are the great giants in both literary and translation fields. Around 1930, a furious translation debate was carried out between them. And lots of Studies have been made about that debate. Different from the traditional translation studies, the present thesis is not intended to make an evaluative study of their translation skills and techniques or to make a judgment to the merits and demerits of their views on translation. It is intended to investigate how the manipulative factors influence their viewpoints on translation.The manipulation theory would take a new angle to contrastively study Lu Xun's and Liang Shiqiu's viewpoints on translation. This theory could give reasonable explanations to the translation controversies between Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu concerning their respective special social backgrounds. Based on the manipulation theory, the present thesis will deeply study the translation debate between Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu in order to dig out the real manipulative factors hiding behind their debate and will also bring some inspirations for both manipulation theory and the contrastive translation study.This study is an in-depth study under the manipulation theory to some degree. In the manipulation theory, both ideology and poetics refer to the social dominant ideology and poetics. The debate between Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu occurs under the same social background with the same social dominant ideology and poetics under which the translators should have the same or similar viewpoints on translation. However, their debate on translation demonstrates their totally different attitudes towards translation in various aspects. Since the ideology and poetics mainly dictate the translation strategy, apart from the social dominant ideology and dominant poetics, there should be some different kinds of ideology and poetics that manipulate Lu Xun's and Liang Shiqiu's viewpoints on translation. Owning to their different surrounding environments, their respective group ideology and group poetics could and do exert great impact on their viewpoints on translation. Furthermore, under the manipulation of these two kinds of ideology, the group ideology or poetics outweighs the social dominant one, which embodies the relativity of the manipulation of the social dominant ideology and poetics.The manipulation from the target readers is a complement to the manipulation theory, too. Target readers existing in the translator's mind also exert forceful manipulation on translation. By taking the target readers into consideration, the translator could satisfy their "expectation horizon" better and thus make his/her translated works more attractive to them. So in this thesis, the target readers will be regarded as a manipulative factor during the contrastive study of Lu Xun's and Liang Shiqiu's viewpoints on translation.Thus, in the aspect of the manipulation from ideology and poetics, the contrastive study between Lu Xun's and Liang Shiqiu's viewpoints on translation is the in-depth study to the manipulation theory, and in the aspect of the manipulation from the target readers, it is the breadth study to the theory. The relativity of the manipulation theory also demonstrates that the group ideology, group poetics, and the translator's subjective initiative in translation could be applied to the contrastive study of the translators in the same social setting.