A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Gone With The Wind From Social-cultural Context Perspective

Translation Studies has developed rapidly and taken the cultural turn since the late 1970s in the West. Some schools have proposed some new theories and research methodologies, the representatives are: the Polysystem theory represented by Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury, the Manipulation theory represented by Andre Lefevere(the school of Translation Studies) and the Skopos theory represented by Hans Vermeer and Christiane Nord. Though each of the schools has its own emphasis and special discoveries, they have something in common: they all regard translation as a dynamic progress which takes place in a particular context(social, cultural or historical context); they all focus on the extra-factors affecting translation from the macro perspectives rather than just from the linguistic level.Based on The Manipulation School and Ander Lefevere's theories and adopting a descriptive approach, the thesis examines translation as a social product in a specific social-cultural context through the comparison of two Chinese versions of Gone with the Wind.The two versions--one translated by Fu Donghua in 1940 and the other by Dai Kan, Li Yeguang and Zhuang Yichuan in 1990, will be compared and analyzed in this thesis. Through the comparison and analysis, the author tries to answers such questions: (1) Why was the novel retranslated again fifty years later? (2) In what aspects are the two versions different? (3) What reasons and factors cause the differences?The whole thesis falls into five parts. Chapter One briefly introduces the research background, research purpose and questions that will be studied in the thesis, the major theoretical framework and methodology as well as the significance of the research. Chapter Two is literature review and theoretical basis of the research. The first section reviews traditional translation criteria and points out their deficency: they fail to analyze translation from the macro-perspective. The second section elaborates on the cultural turn in translation studies and the correlative schools and theories. The emphasis is on the School of Manipulation and Lefevere's theories: translation is a kind of rewriting, it is constrained by the dominant ideology and poetics at a certain time. Ideology is about what society should (be allowed to) be; poetics is about what literature should (be allowed to) be. The third section is the criticism and evaluation on some Chinese versions of the novel, especially on Fu Donghua's version.Chapter Three is a case study. After a short introduction to the novel and its Chinese versions, then supported by many persuasive examples, the comparison and differences between Fu's version and Dai's version are made at two levels: the content and the language style. Chapter Four analyzes the social, cultural and historical context as well as the underlying reasons which produce the two different versions in great detail, it's also the high light of this thesis.Based on what has been discussed above, the present author draws the conclusion in Chapter Five: translation is a dynamic activity in certain circumstances. Literary translation is marked with specific time, and every version has its specific socio-cultural context. We should evaluate translation works from macro-perspective with a dialectical and developing view.