On The Chinese Translations Of The Animal Farm:from The Perspective Of Lefevere’s Manipulation Theory

Animal Farm is one of the representative works of George Orwell, a famous British novelist in the twentieth century. Labeled as one of the most important "anti-Utopian" novels of the twentieth century, Animal Farm exposes the dark side of the totalitarian society, attacks the criminal acts of totalitarianism in the real life and warns against its danger in the future society. This thesis attempts to make a comparative study on Ren Zhiyu’s and Fu Weici’s Chinese versions of the Animal Farm under the framework of Andre Lefevere’s manipulation theory. Particularly, it focuses on how ideology, poetics and patronage manipulate the translators and their translations, so as to provide reference and a broader perspective for the later translation studies of the Animal Farm.This thesis explores the manipulation of the ideology of the translators and the dominant ideology of the target language on the practice of translation through analyzing the translators’translation motivation. At the same time, it focuses on the theme of the mainstream poetics, translation strategies, translation structure, the translation usage as well as the social role of literary, for the purpose of exploring the manipulation of poetics on the translation. This paper also analyzes the material support of the patron to the translators and the patronage influence on the publication of the translations. The introduction of this thesis includes a brief introduction to Lefevere’s manipulation theory, the literature review, the research objectives, methodology and significance. Chapter One discusses the manipulation of ideology represented in the translations of the Animal Farm with focuses on different cultural and political ideology in Ren’s and Fu’s times and its influence on the translators’choosing of the original text, the adoption of the translation strategies and the translation language and style. Chapter Two concentrates on the poetological manipulation represented in the translations of the Animal Farm which comparatively analyzes the Animal Farm from the lexical, syntactic and textual level. Chapter Three focuses on the manipulation of patronage on the translators and the publication of the translations represented in the translations of the Animal Farm. Therefore, the following conclusions are reached: ideology, poetics and patronage of the translators play a great role in the produce of different translations of the same text. When commenting on a translation, we should not abruptly label it as good or bad, but take the translators’ living times into consideration and put the translation product into a particular social-historical context. Every translation has its own value. As long as it reflects the requirement of the times and faithfully displays the translation concept of the translator, it is a success.