A Study Of Ku Hungming's Rewriting Of Ethical And Moral Contents In C-E Translation Of The Analects

Since 1970s, accompanied by the rising of post-modernism, cultural criticism and cultural studies in the west academia, the scholars from Translation Studies began to break through the traditional linguistic and aesthetic pattern and have been devoting themselves to improving the methods for describing literary translation and determining culture and the translation behavior. According to Lefevere's Manipulation Theory, ideology and poetics particularly shape the translator's strategy in the process of translation—the most obviously recognizable type of rewriting.The Analects, as the representative of Confucian classical works and one of the most important traditional Chinese classics, especially the ethical and moral contents in it, not only exerts a wide and deep influence on the Chinese history of thought, education and literature, but also possesses a high status in the world cultural and ideological history. Ku Hungming is the first Chinese scholar that translated The Analects into English in the Chinese translating history and his widely welcomed version aroused a great hit in European and American countries because of its western style.This study, based on a descriptive analysis of Ku Hungming's rewriting of the ethical and moral contents in translating The Analects into English, attempts to find the influence of the social ideology and poetics in the target literature at Ku Hungming's time on his rewriting from both macro and micro points of view based on Lefevere's Manipulation Theory.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter mainly introduces the research background, the research purpose and significance, the structure of the thesis and the definitions of two key terms (rewriting and translating strategies) in this study. In the second chapter, based on the reviews of the previous researches including the researches on the translation of The Analects and the researches on the application of Manipulation Theory to translation studies, the necessity of the present study is stated. The third chapter is the theoretical framework of Manipulation Theory applied in this study. The fourth chapter is the research procedure including the research questions, the research methods, the data collection and analysis, the results and at last the discussions. Through looking into Ku Hungming's translating strategies from two aspects: his translating strategies adopted to rewrite some key terms of the ethical and moral contents in The Analects and his translating strategies adopted to rewrite some chapters concerning the ethical and moral contents in The Analects, the general tendency of Ku Hungming's choice of translating strategies in his rewriting of the ethical and moral contents in translating The Analects into English is concluded as domestication. Based on this result, the influence of the social ideology and poetics in the target literature at Ku Hungming's time on his rewriting of the ethical and moral contents in translating The Analects into English is explored from the perspective of Lefevere's Manipulation Theory on the following two levels: the influence of the social ideology and poetics in the target literature at Ku Hungming's time on the general tendency of his choice of translating strategies; the manipulation of Ku Hungming's individual ideology on his down-to-earth rewriting of the ethical and moral contents in translating The Analects into English under the influence of the social ideology and poetics in the target literature at his time. Finally, the following conclusions are drawn in the fifth chapter:(1) Social ideology and poetics in the target literature at Ku Hungming's time influenced the general tendency of his choice of translating strategies in his rewriting of the ethical and moral contents in translating The Analects into English and domestication is his general tendency;(2) At the same time, Ku Hungming's individual ideology manipulated his down-to-earth rewriting of the ethical and moral contents in translating The Analects into English under the influence of the social ideology and poetics in the target literature at his time.