Studies Of Zhu Shenghao's Translation Of Shakespeare From Manipulation Theory Perspective With The Merchant Of Venice As Example

Zhu Shenghao, the pioneering translator of Shakespeare's works in China, completes the heroic undertaking by his poetic temperament and profound Chinese foundation, devoting his entire life to the task of translating Shakespeare's works. His commendable translated versions have been widely praised up to now. However, his translation ideas and manipulative factors fail to arouse enough attention from scholars. This thesis, taking Zhu Shenghao's translation ideas as the starting point, attempts to demonstrate the manipulative factors by studying Zhu Shenghao's translation activity on the basis of mamipulation theory.Andre Lefevere is one of vitalest representatives of the Culture School. He thinks that linguistics can not explain all the translation phenomena. Translation is not only influenced by linguistics, but also manipulated by other factors such as social, cultural, and economic elements. Therefore, he proposes the manipulation theory for analyzing translation activities scientifically from the aspects of ideology, patronage and poetics. He argues that translation activities are supposed to be manipulated to a certain degree. Hence, with manipulation theory as the framework, this thesis tends to attest the presence of manipulation in Zhu Shenghao's translating Shakespeare by probing into his living age, translation activity and ideas, impact of patronage, etc. with his TheMerchant of Venice as the example. Firstly, the influence of ideology upon Zhu Shenghao's translation activity is explored in terms of social ideology and personal ideology. Secondly, the patronages facilitating Zhu Shenghao's translation undertaking are explained, and The World Press, recommendation and inspiration from Zhan Wenxu as well as surpport and help from Song Qingru play the role of patronage in his manipulation process. Thirdly, the poetics is mainly analyzed in the language aspect. And many examples are quoted from Zhu Shenghao's manipulated version of The Merchant of Venice to expose his impact of poetics at lexical, syntactical, rhyme and rhythm and cultural levels. Finally, the present author draws the conclusion that the manipulating forces clearly exist in his translation.