A Study On Ying Ruocheng’s Drama Translation From The Perspective Of "Universe Of Discourse"

Based on Andre Lefevere’s rewriting theory, this thesis presents an analysis on Ying Ruocheng’sdrama translation activities after Cultural Revolution and his specific translation strategies. Different frommost current studies on Ying Ruocheng’s drama translation from the perspectives of ideology, poetics andpatronage, the present study focuses on another crucial aspect of rewriting theory–the “universe ofdiscourse”. As is to be demonstrated, the concept of “universe of discourse”, preventing pan-ideologizationin translation studies, makes control factors on translation more specific and surmounts the binaryopposition between ideology and poetics. Since hardly any attention has been paid on this subject, thisthesis attempts to reveal the significance of universe of discourse in social and cultural translation studies ina deep and all-round way.The analysis is carried out mainly on Ying Ruocheng’s Chinese-English and English-Chinese dramatranslation accomplished both shortly after Cultural Revolution and during the “Four-Year Discussion onthe Notion of Drama”, and this period of time plays a key role in China’s culture construction when thedominant ideology and poetics underwent tremendous reform. Giving consideration to the background,themes of the original works and applying various exemplifications, this thesis unveils how YongRuocheng strikes the balance between the universe of discourse belongs to the original language and that ofthe target one. And the concluding remarks point to the fact that both Ying Ruocheng’s choice of works andtranslation strategies are influenced by the six factors proposed by Andre Lefevere, namely, the status of theoriginal, the self-image of the culture that text is translated into, the types of texts deemed acceptable in thatculture, the levels of diction deemed acceptable in it, the intended audience, and the “cultural scripts” thataudience is used to or willing to accept.