Cultural Manipulation And Hegemony In Bestselling Translation

Bestsellers, as a main form of contemporary popular culture, play a more and more important role in people's daily life. Due to the development of globalization and intensified intercultural communication, the circulation of bestsellers should not be confined to a certain region. However, a book which is a bestseller in its own country may not achieve the status of bestseller in other countries. To make a bestseller well accepted in other countries is closely related to translation.Jiang Rong's novel Lang Tuteng immediately rose to fame after its publication in 2004 and becomes a bestseller in China. And the English version of Lang Tuteng, translated by Howard Goldblatt, also becomes a bestseller in English speaking countries after its publication in 2008. Accordingly, the present thesis tries to make a tentative study on the bestselling translation Wolf Totem within the framework of Manipulation Theory and Cultural Hegemony of Postcolonial School in translation.Cultural studies in translation provide new approaches to translation studies. So translation is no longer viewed as a simple transformation between languages but more a cultural phenomenon which is closely related to ideology, and power in a given society at a given time. In view of this, this thesis tries to explore the cultural manipulation and hegemony in bestselling translation with a case study on Wolf Totem. The present thesis first discusses the cultural manipulation in Wolf Totem. From the perspective of patronage's power, translator's interference, and reader's identification, the author tries to explore the reasons for English translated version Wolf Totem's success. Then, this thesis further develops the underlying reason for cultural manipulation in bestselling translation, that is, Cultural Hegemony. The imbalance in cultural communication and ethnocentrism in translation both reveal Cultural Hegemony in bestselling translation.This research shows that Wolf Totem's success can attribute to the manipulation of patronage, translator and readers'identification under the constraints of ideology and poetics. Patronage's selection of Lang Tuteng and translator's selection of translation strategies in Wolf Totem are target reader-oriented, therefore Wolf Totem could well satisfy western readers'expectation. But meanwhile, Wolf Totem's success reveals Cultural Hegemony in translation. Since the selection of Lang Tuteng by the patronage, the translation strategies adopted by the translator are catering for western readers'taste and reading habit, hence Wolf Totem is inscribed with English-language values. The ideological and poetical manipulation on Lang Tuteng results in variation in Wolf Totem and the poetics of the translated version are different from the original version. In addition, in order to fight against Cultural Hegemony in translation, translators should construct our own national culture and advocate foreignizing translation so as to preserve the characteristics and cultural identities of the Chinese.