Poetological Manipulation On Translation Strategies

In the late twentieth century, with the expanding impact of the cultural turn on translation researches, translation from the perspective of culture became the new spotlight, which enabled Translation Studies to become a scientific discipline, completely independent from Literature Studies and Linguistics. From then on, translation itself is no longer considered as a pure transformation from one language to another, but a form of rewriting and acculturation. Andre Lefevere, one of the representatives of the Cultural School, puts forward that translation is a form of rewriting and a form that can create a new text. He also points out that all rewritings, whatever their intention is, reflect a certain ideology and a certain poetics.The theoretical foundation of the thesis is based on Lefevere's Manipulation Theory, especially the Poetological Manipulation Theory. The subject of this case study is Guo Moruo's translation of Shelley's poems. As a well-known poet and scholar in China, Guo is also a great translator with his own style. His translation of Shelley's poems exhibits all kinds of poetological factors that affect his translation strategies. Of all the poetological factors, his own poetics, the mainstream poetics of his time and the western poetics stand out most. Therefore, from the perspective of poetics, the thesis adopts a descriptive research on Guo Moruo's translation of Shelley's poems, focusing on the various constraints and manipulation that different poetological factors have on his translation strategiesThe thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction to the theoretical foundation of the research, i.e. Lefevere's Manipulation Theory; it overviews the main characteristics of Guo Moruo's poetics and it also makes an introduction to Shelley's poem as well as its translation by Guo Moruo that will be analysed in the thesis. The second, the third and the fourth chapters are the main body of the thesis, with a similar structure. The second chapter discusses poetological manipulation of Guo's translation strategies at the level of sound, analysing how Guo handles with rhythm and rhyme in Shelley's poems. The third chapter discusses poetological manipulation of Guo's translation strategies at the level of diction, exploring how Guo deals with simile, metaphor, and symbolism in Shelley's poems. The fourth chapter discusses poetological manipulation of Guo's translation strategies at the syntactic level, surveying how Guo copes with repetition, parallelism and poetic form. These three chapters analyse the poetological manipulation of Guo's translation strategies at three different levels and point out the changes in Guo's translation due to poetological influences. The fifth chapter presents the conclusion of the thesis which includes research findings as well as limitations.