Power And Translation

Excellent literature works would have different versions with the change of time, including Mao Zedong's poems, which have more than 20 English versions. Different translators in different stages of history have diverse understandings on the political and artistic characters of the works. Therefore, by choosing three representative English versions of Mao's Poems, the dialectic relationship between power and translation has been explored. The three representative versions are as follows: the official version published by Foreign Languages Press in 1976, the Barnstone's version published by Harper and Row in 1972 and Xu's version published by China Translation & Publishing Corporation in 1993.By qualitative approach, from macroscopic to microscopic angles, this paper has made a comparison on the differences among the three English versions and given a comprehensive research on both the external and internal of the three English versions. It is pointed out that power is not only the rule means of a nation, but also is a kind of integrated strength and ubiquitous and complex entity in ideological field. It analyzes the power and manipulation on translation and strengthens translation's counter effects on power, which is the development and creation about the theory of power and translation and also the supplement for the past research on the English versions of Mao Zedong's poems.The relationship between power and translation is interactive: power controls or manipulates translation and translation also reacts on power by constructing and subverting power. Moreover, any translations that are regarded as successful and authoritative can not avoid its era limitations; although controlled and restricted by power, translators also have their own subjectivity.