The Applicability Of Rewiring Theory In Explaining Literary Translation

Before 1980s, the discussions on translation were dominated by traditional aesthetics and modem linguistics, which regarded translation as a mere tool of research in their own fields. Such an attitude towards translation hinders the further development of its studies. Andre Lefevere, a theorist of comparative literature and translation, has broken the shackles of the prescriptive approaches, and becomes a pillar of the descriptive translation studies through discussing translation from the perspective of social culture, especially from comparative literature and cultural contrast. Lefevere's greatest contribution to translation studies is his Rewriting Theory or Manipulation Theory, which focuses on the interaction between literary system and the whole system of culture, and investigates the impact of translated literature on the evolution of the target literary system. Although Lefevere has devoted fifteen years to the generation of Rewriting Theory, there are still many vague concepts and statements left, such as constraints influencing literary translation, and the inferior definition of its key terms and so on.Such ambiguity and indefiniteness trigger a great number of controversies, which impair the utility of Rewiring Theory in terms of explaining translation phenomenon or analyzing translation products. Hence this paper expounds the concept of terms in Rewriting Theory, such as ideology, poetics, patronage and professionals, and their interrelations with a conclusion that literary translation is controlled by two constraints of ideology and poetics from inside or outside the system with their respective guardians of human agents as patronage or professionals.Compared with other schools studying translation, the Cultural School has two shortcomings:one is the arbitrary selection of texts of study; the other is the direct assertion with less proofs or demonstration. Bearing this in mind, the author examines the earliest Chinese translations of the English novel Gulliver's Travels. Through a comparative study, it reveals the influence on target texts exerted by Chinese social ideology and cultural poetics at that time, and verifies the applicability of Rewiring Theory in explaining literary translation.During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a most unsettled period, the imperialist invasion in a large scale, covering military affairs, politics, and culture, undermined the originally impregnable social and cultural system. The dominant ideology and poetics became reluctant to face an unprecedented challenge with constantly changing emphasis and subjects of translation.From 1872 to 1906, serving different economic or political purposes, Gulliver's Travels appeared with all traditional publishing modes of newspaper, magazine and book for three times. In addition, various rewriting phenomena, such as renaming the novel, deforming the characters, and altering the content, also exposed the permeation of the traditional sense of virtue and morality.In the aspect of poetics, ancient Chinese novels have developed two branches:one is classic short story and the other is the vernacular novel. Following the styles of ancient novel, the first two versions choose a strategy of domestication, Tan Yin Xiao Lu in literary sketches and Han Man You in chapter novel. On the contrary, with an intention of learning from western novels, Lin Shu shows his originality in the style and language with remaining the structure and narration of the source text, and also translates in classical Chinese the novel to change its vulgar image as an "unorthodox school". However, in details of narration, depiction and embodiment of time, the trace of traditional poetics is left everywhere in the three versions.