On Extratextual Factors In Translation Of Political Texts From The Perspective Of Lefevere's Manipulation Theory

Translation has been traditionally regarded as a matter of linguistic transfer. Since 1970s, in the circle of translation studies, there appeared the"cultural turn"and then the"power turn", which have broken the barrier of purely linguistic research and converted the researchers'attention to extra-linguistic factors. During this period, Andre Lefevere, one of the representatives of the Manipulation School, put forth the concept of"manipulation"and argued that language is just one aspect influencing the translation process, while the whole process would be manipulated much more by diverse extra-linguistic factors. The proposition of this manipulation theory has paved a new path for translation studies.As an independent text type, political texts manifest one nation's policies and guidelines, which bear a direct concern with the country's sovereignty, territorial integrity, the relationships between different countries and even the development trend of international situation. So the quality of these political translations will directly affect the result of one country's publicity. In China, the translation tasks are generally undertaken by such professional translation departments as Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, Xinhua Agency, etc., which, to a large extent, guarantees their quality and authority for further studies.So, this thesis intends to put the study of political translation into a larger and broader context. Based on the manipulation theory, and a descriptive and explanatory research method, it makes a tentative comparison and analysis between GWR 2010 and its English version with the aim of revealing the role played by the"invisible hand"—ideology, the"visible hand"—patronage, as well as poetics in the translation process of Chinese political texts. The ultimate goal of the present research is to apply Lefevere's triad theory of manipulation to the Chinese environment to examine its validity and applicability.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One is an introduction covering the research background, research significance, research methodology as well as the layout of the whole thesis. Chapter Two is a literature review,reviewing the current research situation of translation of political texts and also carrying out a retrospect of the studies on manipulation theory at home and abroad. Chapter Three, firstly, explicates the Power Turn, under which Lefevere proposed his manipulation theory, and then lays bare the theoretical framework of this thesis—Manipulation Theory and the three manipulative factors, namely, ideology, patronage and poetics. Chapter Four briefly discusses the characteristics, classification and different research approaches to political texts'translation. Chapter Five is a case study, which is also the highlight of the thesis, focusing on the analysis of how the triad factors affect the translation process of political texts with GWR 2010 as its corpus. After preliminary researches, it is found that due to the special status of political texts, their translation cannot escape the control of the social mainstream ideology and poetics; meanwhile, patronage also plays a vital role in the stages of selection, censoring and public releasing. Chapter Six is the conclusion, in which the author presents the major findings, limitations and some suggestions for further studies.