On Impacts Of Comprehensive National Strength On Translation

Traditionally, translation theory has focused particularly on transferring themeaning exactly between languages, and tends to deem that language is transparent,thus, translation could get away from the influence of the out-textural factors. Withthe emergence of the Cultural School in the1990s, researchers began to takeextra-textual factors into consideration and put translation into historical, political,social, and cultural context. More and more attention is paid to interaction betweenliterary and external world. In the social and political reality full of various forceswhich are unprecedentedly active in the late20th century and early21st century, sometranslators and translation theorists are increasingly engaging themselves in analyzingtranslation and translation theories from the political and social perspective. Theydeems that translation is inevitably associated with political tendencies and aspirationsof social groups, and the relationship between source language and target languagehas never gone beyond politics and are always entangled with power. However, thecomprehensive national strength, an important concept in international politics, hasbeen rarely discussed in translation studies.Based on Lefevere’s manipulation theory, this thesis will take social, political andeconomical factors into account to analyze and explore how national comprehensivestrength composed of hard power and soft power, has impacts on direction oftranslation, translation strategies and tendency of source text selection bymethodology of comparative analysis, case studies and historical research. For in thecross-cultural communications, the comprehensive national strength of a country willdetermine the transmission power of its culture, the status of the poetics andideologies between countries and the dominant ideology of a country. Likewise,translation, as a way of international cultural communication, will be definitelyinfluenced by comprehensive national strength. On the one hand, comprehensivenational strength is not only one of factors which would exert influences and constraints on translation, it is also the cornerstone for translation; on the other hand,translation is indispensable to promoting comprehensive national strength. It is, thus,helpful for us to understand the nature and feature of the translation. More importantly,proper translation theory and cultural strategy could be made according to thecomprehensive national strength of a country.