A Cultural Approach To Literary Translation

In today's ever-accelerating process of globalization,translation as an important way of cultural exchange, its ways and means of research are different from those of the past, which are purely set out from a linguistic point of view, or try to find a set of norms for the translation as a basis for evaluation. In the early 1970s, the Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar proposed Polysystem theory and caused the cultural shift in translation studies; so that translating activities could combine with the cultural contexts, political factors and social conditions in both source and target languages, and this paves a new researching way for translation studies.Translation is a cultural interaction, and its nature of cultural exchange determines the important influence of cultural factors in the process of translation. Translation has always been one of the main ways for the national, cultural exchange between countries. National literature is produced in the unique cultural environment. This also means that literature always bears a national cultural imprint under the particular historical background. Literature and translated literature exist in two cultural contexts. Therefore, the original author and translator are bound to hold very different cultural ideas which are particularly prominent in literary translation. Under different social and cultural background, the translators'choice of texts and translating strategies will show the diversities.This thesis will firstly probe into the relationship and interactive effects among language, culture and translation, and focus on the social and cultural factors that influence the translation of literary works to start the discussion. Even-Zohar's polysystem theory will be the theoretical support for the important proposition as translated literature's cultural position in the context of specific historical background, and Lefevere's rewriting history will also be applied to the novel translation in two unique periods in Chinese translation history -the late Qing dynasty and May 4th movement. The thesis will show the influence of specific historical and cultural factors, ideology and the standard of Poetics towards literary translation, which specially relates to the cultural attitudes of the translators as well as their choices on the texts and translating strategies. On this basis, the impact of cultural factors towards literary translation will be re-grasped with a view to bring some inspiration to the contemporary practice and research on literary translation.